


Gift of the Raven

by Barb G (troutkitty)



Category: Master of the Lines Series - Angela Fiddler
Genre: BDSM, Haunted Houses, M/M, Possession, Ravens, Shapeshifting, Spanking, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:29:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troutkitty/pseuds/Barb%20G
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cory has always been mercurial; passionate one second and frozen the next, but when he was hot, he was scorching. Luke had brought him up as a vampire but couldn’t keep him the first time around. Now evil’s come on an arctic wind, and they’ll need each other to fight it.</p><p>This story is set in the same universe as the Masters of the Lines series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gift of the Raven

The river was shallow here, which only made the currents cutting through the rocks by the shore all the stronger. A flood had carved out the edges of the banks, and the city had yet to rebuild the safe pathways, mini cement roads with dividing lines. The crumbling remains of the old path went in fits and starts down the new banks, and the fading remains of human interference left Luke feeling better than if there was no signs of humans at all.

It was quiet. Humans could take dark and cold, but combine them and even the roughest beat it to the safest, brightest lit path. The only creatures down here with him had four legs and the bright, piercing eyes of a predator. The thermometer had taken a dive during the day. Luke felt it even deep in the basement of the house he’d taken as his. It wasn’t just the smell of burning dust from the central heating kicking in; when the first delicate lines of ice had formed on the edge of the smallest puddle left over from the three days of rain, he’d felt it in his bones.

He exhaled, and his breath fogged around him. He wasn’t as warm as he could have been; it had been at least a day since he’d fed, but it was a wholly human response to the change of season. It had been years, almost a century now that he thought about it, since the last time he saw a flock of geese flying south, but the desire to trade his long, dark evenings for heat was so strong he felt his body sing with the need. 

A bird screeched above him, the sound echoing against the trees and rocks around him. It wasn’t Corbin, but one of his minions, Luke had no doubt. He would have felt Corbin, even in winged form. And sure enough, the silence had time to settle down around him before he heard the beating of wings just a little bigger than they ought to have been. Luke didn’t crane his neck to see; Corbin was as black as an empty eye socket. The beating wings were just in front of him, but Luke didn’t see Corbin until he landed and shifted, if that was the right word for abruptly becoming something else.

The world was various shades of gray in the bright moonlight, but Corbin was silver. He always had been. His black hair was braided back tight enough that the handsome shape of his skull was visible, and his green eyes were arctic when compared to his warm skin. He wore a black turtle neck and jeans tight on his ass; it wasn’t hard to remember those details, it was what he always wore. The only concession he’d make for the seasons was the gauge of the cotton. That night was freezing, but Corbin still wore thin leather gloves that were as soft as a dying sigh. He never took them off, not even during sex and the smell of them left Luke hard and yet still full of loathing. 

“Moping is beneath you,” Corbin said. “Truly. You sicken me just by looking at you.”

“Then go away, Corbin,” Luke said. He picked up a smooth, flat rock, just meant for skipping across the water, but he didn’t throw it. Instead, he clenched his fist around it. “It will solve both our problems.”

“I’m bored.”

“My heart bleeds.”

“Then you won’t mind if I lick it up for you,” Corbin said, and was suddenly kneeling over where Luke sat on one of the crumbling remains of the path. Corbin was hot and heavy, too full of blood. It gave his cheeks a blush that Luke could only envy. “It’s cold, you’re hard, and I’m horny. Let’s just fuck.”

Luke stood despite Corbin’s weight over him. He pushed Corbin away, and one of Corbin’s fang cut his lips as Corbin twisted away. Corbin dabbed his lip with the back of his fist. The blood he wiped up was invisible on the black leather in the dark, but Luke smelled it. “Playing hard to get,” he said. “Or should I say playing already got, but would like to get again.”

“It’s over, Cory. Everything. I’m done with you.” Using Corbin’s human name was an admission of weakness, and if Luke could have swallowed his tongue in the next instant, he would have. Corbin, of course, saw it. Corbin missed nothing.

Corbin smiled and opened his arms widely. “Wouldn’t you like the two of us to go back to your place, get naked and fuck in front of the fire? I’ll even let you suck my fingers. You know you like that.”

Luke brushed off his jeans and headed back up the path to civilization. “Fuck you, Corbin.”

“I’m trying,” Corbin called to his retreating back.

The parking lot was empty except for a derelict car parked in the far corner. It had half a dozen parking tickets from the city, probably worth more than the car itself. The leather seats were ripped and shredded in what had once been a pretty nice interior, but Luke smelled the death in the car. His gift told him more than he wanted to know. The owner hadn’t died here, but down by the river, and he’d fallen into the fast current. It had been a night like this, with the same strong current, and no one had seen the body slip out of the city. Luke shook his head, knowing he shouldn’t be feeling a pang of regret; in his heyday he’d caused more than a couple people to disappear, but he couldn’t help the morbid sense of loss inside him from growing.

Corbin perched up on the car’s hood, coiled like a bird that had just come to rest. He steamed in the chilly air, visible now under the single street light that lit the otherwise dim parking lot, and Luke knew if he took three steps over to where Corbin was, he could pull Corbin down to him, force him over the hood of the car. 

Corbin’s dark eyes were black under the harsh lights. He parted his lips, offering, and this was different than the offer down below. No words. It was primal. They weren’t meant to be solitary creatures, and Luke had been alone for years before he’d found Corbin turning tricks on the street. He hadn’t wanted to turn him, didn’t want the responsibility, especially not after what had happened to him, but he’d believed Corbin and his lies.

And they had been lies. How Corbin had looked at him and known what he was still escaped Luke, but he thought about it practically every day. He’d hunted Cory only to find himself trapped. Cory had renamed himself and Corbin hadn’t been reborn so much as he’d been…released. 

Still, Luke went to him. Corbin spread his legs wide enough that the tight denim didn’t have enough fabric left to wrinkle. This close the warmth coming off him was hot enough to prick the skin on Luke’s face. He grabbed Corbin’s hips, wishing he could just overlook what a cold bastard Corbin was underneath all the heat and unspoken invitation. 

Corbin slid down to his ass, about to wrap his legs around Luke’s hips, but Luke stopped him, pinning his knees down. Corbin fought, but as strong as he was, he was still barely out of the pup stage. Luke was just stronger. “Not even if you were the last set of prick and balls in western Canada,” he whispered in Corbin’s ear, but still couldn’t stop himself from dragging his fangs across Corbin’s cheek. 

Luke felt Corbin’s groan reverberate through the metal of the car. “Luke,” he began, his voice half way between a drawl and a beg, but then he stopped talking. Luke heard it too; the soft chinking behind them was the sound of a hand drawing back drapes. The only thing behind them was an old historic restaurant. Luke turned, suddenly ill at ease having his back to the blacked out windows. But when he turned, one of the windows was lit.

It wasn’t the window in the attic, though he expected it to have been for the effect. Attics always made him think that the ceiling was about to collapse on him, and he’d always hated the feeling. It was the second story window, the one on the left. And there was definitely a man’s shadow against the bright light, looking down at him. It should have meant nothing. There was no reason for the alarm Luke was feeling — but he was. He watched as the man lazily pointed his finger from Luke, to Corbin, back to Luke, and then come to rest on Corbin. “Get in my car,” Luke said without looking away. He was parked on the street and the engine would still be warm.

“What?” Corbin asked.

“Get in my car,” Luke said, unlocking the door from where he stood. He didn’t want to sprint the few yards between the two cars, but in another moment or so, he would have. Instead, he grabbed Corbin by the arm. “Get in the fucking car, Corbin. Don’t argue with me.”

Corbin, for once, didn’t. He threw himself into the passenger seat, sprawling like he owned the car, like he had every time he’d gotten into the car from the very first. He even drummed his fingers against his inseam. “My place or yours?” he asked.

Luke didn’t look at him until he’d backed out of the parking lot and pulled onto the street. The Deane House, the restaurant was called. He’d passed it a hundred thousand times on his way to the river bed. It had been only opened for brunch, so he’d never been inside it, but it had seemed fairly innocuous in a neighborhood full of historic buildings. It had even been painted a cheery red brick color, despite the fire that had gutted it months ago. It seemed odd that they were just now renovating. The windows on the front side looked like bruised eyes in the darkness, and the cheery sign advertising their hours had a Closed for restoration sign over it. It hadn’t been there at midnight, when Luke had driven past.

“I said, your place or mine?” Corbin said, louder this time. His fingers were constantly moving over his inseam, a dead giveaway for how personally he would take the rejection. Luke was suddenly too tired to fight. “Mine,” he said.

“All right,” Corbin said and leaned back. “I knew you couldn’t resist.”

Luke looked behind him in the rear view mirror, but all the windows were dark again. The knot in his belly didn’t go away. “It means nothing, Corbin.”

“Keep telling yourself that, old man.”

*

Luke’s house was so far in the suburbs the first time he’d driven up the driveway to the attached garage, Corbin, then Cory, had made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “You’re still here?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Luke said. When he’d been in Seattle, his old master, Marcus, had had one of the huge, decaying old houses that he’d saved from the wrecker ball. It had been divided up into eight different suites, and in the late evening, before the sun went all the way done, Luke had hated wandering the broken down halls. When Marcus had picked up everything and moved to Calgary, Luke couldn’t wait, until he saw practically the same house Marcus had purchased as a replacement. There was a dead man who searched through a bureau that wasn’t there anymore, and a woman who sometimes climbed the narrow winding staircase with her walker, and sometimes just lay there on the main floor of the landing, her head at a strange angle when compared to the rest of her body. 

They’d rattled around the huge house together, but grew more and more apart. When they’d had been their first, last and only fight. Marcus had left him there, in a house Luke had hated, and promised he’d send for him when he was settled back in Seattle and had cooled off enough.

Only he never did. Eventually, Luke sold the house; the housing market had been hot and the huge lot the house stood on had been worth more than Luke thought possible. He’d used half the money to buy the small, cozy house on Maple Creek Drive and the rest he invested. It had done quite well for him, too.

“Luke, buddy, you here with me? It’s getting light out there.”

“Right,” Luke said. He turned off the engine of the car and closed the garage door before getting out of his specially treated car with its specially treated windows. “After you.”

“I don’t have a key,” Corbin said.

“And I don’t believe you. After you.”

“You’re not a trusting soul, are you?” Corbin asked, but fished out the keychain from his too tight jeans.

“No,” Luke said. “Leave it when you go.”

Corbin tsked, but unlocked the door, punched in the master code on the alarm, and led the way into the living room inside.

Trying very hard to look like he wasn’t, Corbin took a look around. “You haven’t changed much.”

Luke glanced around the room himself. “I bricked in the sky-light,” he said, pointing up. Other than that, the only thing that changed was which night blooming flowers he had in the garden. The spider plants had runners across the hardwood floor that he swept around rather than disturbing, and the big leather couches were overstuffed and comfortable. The rug under the coffee table was new, now that he thought about it, but just new to the house. He loved the way it had been passed on from family member to family member, and while he didn’t understand the language of the conversations that had been held over it, they had been mostly held with love. The rug warmed the entire room for it. 

“Still rattling around here all alone with just your ghost?”

Mrs. Reinhart, who had owned the house before Luke, was still around. She’d died here, a month or so before Luke had bought the place, and he still saw her, sometimes. She spent time in his garden, working with flowers and herbs that had long since shriveled and died, and when he was really tired he saw her in the kitchen, puttering around in the dead of night when the elderly had trouble sleeping, fixing herself a pot of tea or a piece of toast. She saw him, he knew she did, but barely acknowledged him with a nod before going back to her business at hand.

“She’s still here.”

“And are you still pining for your master?”

“Corbin, don’t. “

Corbin stepped on the rug, kicking off his shoes. His socks came next, and only barefoot did a hint of softness enter his face. “So, you want to fuck or not?”

Luke shook his head. “Can you at least pretend you give a rat’s ass? Please, Corbin. For me.”

For a moment, Corbin flushed. “My bad. If you want to pretend you don’t think I’m a bastard and I don’t remember that you think I’m really nothing to you, we can,” he said. “I like the couch. Can we fuck here, please?”

It was good enough, all things considered. Luke knew he shouldn’t have said anything; Corbin wasn’t his, he didn’t have to be the one trying to change everything about him. It wasn’t the first time they’d gotten back together for sex — hell, it wasn’t the first time this week — but it was the first time they’d gotten to the taking-off-clothes part without at least one screaming match.

Corbin pulled off his sweater. He’d lost weight since he was human; the last of his fast food diet had sweated out of him. He’d always been thin, despite everything he ate, but he was hard now, in all senses of the word. His stomach was flat — no six pack apparent — but Luke had never found that particularly attractive. And his pectorals had finally filled out, no longer making his chest looked caved in. He hadn’t taken off his gloves; he wouldn’t, not unless Luke asked him to. He stood, wearing only leather and jeans, waiting for Luke to give him a sign, but Luke just wanted another minute to soak in the view. 

“You are beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you,” Corbin said. He swallowed, needlessly. “Do you want me to continue?”

“If you want to.”

Corbin frowned, but only for a second. This was the point where he liked Luke to just take over, make all the decisions or just worship his cock, but Luke just wasn’t interested in the old roles. Corbin undid his jeans, sliding them off quickly as though Luke couldn’t or wouldn’t see his lack of underwear, and then he was completely naked save for the gloves. “There. You happy?” The voice was harder than Corbin probably intended, but he was flushed all over, and his cock was already semi-hard. Like it or not, and Luke knew Corbin didn’t like it at all, there was a strong streak in him that enjoyed being watched, regardless of how open that left him.

“I’m happy,” Luke told him. “You can relax, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Another disgusted sound, but Corbin moved his hands to his thighs, palm out, and was stroking the inside of his thighs with his gloves. Luke recognized the sound. It was Corbin’s that will cost you extra noise, but at least he didn’t say it. Luke knew Corbin loved him, but it was in his own way and at his own pace, and that was something that they could never agree on.

“Don’t go back then. Stay with me now,” Corbin said. “Please.”

“I’m here. Do you want to take off your gloves?”

Corbin looked down to his fingers. “Not particularly.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Corbin only nodded. His hair was cropped above his ears--something new for him since they’d broken up—but still he swept imaginary hair off his neck, offering his throat to Luke. “I drank more for you,” he said. “I always drink more for you. Would you drink from me?”

That was something Luke could do. He went to Corbin and kissed the tight line of muscle over his collar bone. “Do you want me to bite here?” he asked, and kissed the base of his neck where the vein surfaced. 

Corbin only nodded. Luke bit down into the warm skin and felt the first bit of blood in his mouth. He shouldn’t have gone so long between his feedings. The hunger forced the feeding into something more primal, and he couldn’t stop himself from growling. Corbin put his head down, hands open and behind his back, and didn’t try to escape. Cory let him feed past the point where Luke knew he should stop. But the blood was sweet and hot, and he was hungry and cold. When he finally broke away, Corbin had to brace himself on the couch just under his ass. 

Luke pulled off his clothes, letting them stay where they landed, and waited while Corbin recovered enough to drop down to his knees. He crawled to where his jeans were, in front of the couch and pulled out a crumpled tube of lube. He used the couch to support his weight on his elbow so that he could smear some of the lube onto his fingers. 

Luke stroked the small of Corbin’s back, gently. Corbin only flinched after he pushed the second finger inside himself, and even then only for a second. “We don’t have to do this,” Luke said. “I can suck you, if you want.”

“No,” Corbin said, voice short. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and holding the air inside him seemed to help. Luke didn’t know why, and he supposed if he did, there wouldn’t be the wall there was between them. 

“Okay,” Corbin said, still short. He let the rest of the breath out, then took another. “I mean, I’m ready. If you are. Luke.”

If Luke had used a pair of pliers to pull the words out, they wouldn’t have arrived any more mangled or broken. Corbin was waiting for him on his hands and knees, head inches away from the cushions, but it was wrong. Luke knew Corbin would hate it. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the couch and pulled Corbin up to him. Corbin’s face relaxed. “Thanks,” he said.

“How long has it been this bad?” Luke asked.

“I’m not looking for you to be my shrink right now,” Corbin said, and climbed up onto the couch. He turned around, not facing Luke. If Luke had said something, he knew Corbin would have turned back around, but in that moment, he honestly didn’t want to see how broken Corbin still was. “Accept this for what it is,” Corbin said, and it was so close to what Luke had just been thinking, a stab of guilt caught him. 

“Just a snack before a booty call,” Luke said, knowing he should just push Corbin away. And Corbin wouldn’t argue. Luke could see him getting dressed, despite how close the sunrise was, and walking out into the growing light. Luke took Corbin’s hips, unable to ask him to stay, but wanting him to know that Luke wanted him to stay.

“You got it,” Corbin said, but if it was to what Luke said or what he didn’t say, Luke would never know. He sank down over Luke’s cock. For a moment there was too much resistance. It hurt, but just for a second before Corbin opened up for him. “Let me. Please, Luke.”

That didn’t come out as hard. Luke removed his hands, locking them behind his head. Corbin braced himself on Luke’s knee, with upper body strength that Luke could only envy. Their bodies hadn’t forgetten their rhythm. Corbin started slow, knowing Luke preferred it that way. Luke closed his eyes, giving in to the growing tension. 

“Admit it. You missed me,” Corbin said. He came to rest in Luke’s lap. Luke wanted to grab his shoulders, pulling him even further down, but he didn’t. 

There was no reason to answer, so Luke didn’t. “You can hold my hips,” Corbin said. “Just don’t—“

Just don’t try to control him, Luke thought. He didn’t have to; Luke had learned his lesson. Only once Luke’s hand was in place did Corbin really start to move. He fucked himself, using Luke more as a tool rather than as a partner, and with his head bowed Luke had nothing to look at but Corbin’s well muscled back. Luke could have stood up and forced him over the couch, but wouldn’t. It had taken them over a year before they’d actually achieved penetration with anything bigger than a finger. Luke remembered teasing Corbin that it must have meant that he’d been a pretty lousy hustler, but Cory, who had been licking his finger, stopped for just a second. “Or a very good one,” he said, simply, and went back to sucking his finger.

“Slap me,” Corbin said, voice distant. “Both hands. Please, Luke.”

Luke rubbed Corbin’s skin. It was easier with Corbin not to be able to see his face. Luke slapped his ass, flat hand open. The pink line of his hand print rose instantly. Corbin thrust back, groaning in pain, but he was harder for the blow. “Again,” he moaned.

Luke slapped him again, catching him only with his finger tips. It was a stinging blow, harder than Luke intended, but it only pulled another moan from Corbin. “Don’t stop,” he said, throwing his head back. “Just don’t stop. Please.”

“I won’t,” Luke promised. And he wouldn’t. Corbin’s cheeks turned a deep ruby red. Corbin was close. His shoulders shuddered and the moans he made were softer, now full of need. Luke grabbed onto his hips, something Luke would never be allowed to do unless Corbin was completely in his headspace.

Corbin reached behind him, and the leather on his fingers was as warm as his skin was. He sought out Luke’s hands, entwining their fingers. He leaned back into Luke’s chest. The tension in his body was electric, and he stopped fucking himself on Luke’s cock to better…writhe — if that was the word for it — against Luke’s body. He tried to get Luke to dig his nails into his skin, to mark him, but Luke kept his fingers straight. 

“You bastard.” Corbin was already coming. His entire body shuddered, and he tightened his muscles on Luke. For a moment it was too much, but he grabbed Luke’s hips and pulled himself all the way down. He pushed him away, then pulled himself back, and that was enough. Luke came too, biting down into Corbin’s shoulder, and Corbin only shuddered again. The blood tasted of Corbin’s need. Luke’s orgasm crested too quickly, overwhelming for just the split second, and when it receded, it left him empty and broken. Corbin remained still for another minute, his entire body just waiting for Luke to push him off. But instead, Luke just kissed the spot he’d bitten, cleaning it off until the wound closed itself again.

Afterward they went downstairs. If Luke had offered the invitation, it would have probably sparked an argument, so he didn’t ask. It was full daylight outside and they both felt it in their bones. Luke’s body always felt heavier during the day. It was more difficult for him to move or even articulate coherent sentences. Corbin didn’t feel it as strongly, but they still went silently and stiffly down to the store room. Luke had converted it to his master bedroom, but he still thought of it as a store room. The concrete on the floor had been made of churned and hardened earth, and it was more welcoming to him during the day than the finest carpet could have been. It kept the room cool and protected them while the sun raged on above them.

They fell into their own sides of the bed and didn’t touch as they fell asleep. Luke woke up once during the day while the sun was hot enough to reach even the basement. The radiation flooded his body, making him feel like he was in the throes of a hangover.

Corbin’s naked arm was over the covers. He’d taken off his glove, something that Luke had never seen him do before, and his left hand was exposed. Corbin — Cory, his brain provided because Luke had always hated the name Cory had chosen — didn’t stir, not even when Luke ran his hand down Cory’s arm. It was absolutely dark in the room; Luke’s eyes didn’t even have a speck of light to see with, but he felt where Cory’s slightly chilly skin was, and the burn on Cory’s hand ached for both of them.

The rivets from the iron were visible as white circles in the otherwise red curved mark. Cory had done it to himself back when he was a human teenager. There had been no great tragedy in Cory’s life, just a con artist father who cared if he was there or not only as long as he was useful. As soon as Cory was old enough, the old man would drag him along on his short cons. Most of his marks didn’t believe such a caring father could be up to no good, and he’d taken full advantage of that. Poor Cory learned quickly that his father loved him only on the little trips that they took, and his disgust at the stupidity of people was born. The jobs hadn’t lasted, of course, and eventually his father was arrested and sent to jail. Cory had been sent to live with his aunt. The woman had taken the court’s maintenance money and then didn’t maintain anything. Cory spent the next few years in and out of juvie. But he conned his social worker the same way his father conned his marks, and the stays were never too long. 

It was in these years, just after he turned eighteen and the money stopped coming that his aunt had put him on a bus with a one-way ticket. He’d come to Calgary with a freshly ruined hand, and the normal jostling of the bus had just about killed him after some older men had rolled him in the washroom for his pain meds. That much Luke knew.

He extrapolated the rest. Cory didn’t talk about it, but there were nights when he would listen to Luke speak, and provide one word answers that built the story up in bits and pieces. It had been a vampire, that much Luke had figured out. Cory hadn’t shown any surprise when Luke came out to him, as it were. The old scars on his neck were a dead giveaway, regardless. 

The vampire, whoever it had been, had wanted Cory. Luke had only been compelled once, and he remembered how horrified he had been to have absolutely no control. For a teenager like Cory it would have been hell.

And the hold had been a strong one. It must have been someone quite powerful. Cory hadn’t just touched the iron. Oh, no. He’d held it to his flesh, and even as he felt the burn spreading into his hand, the need to obey had still been there. He’d passed out, and only then the spell felt broken.

It had wounded him in more ways than physically. His aunt had taken him to the hospital, where they not only treated the wound itself; they had him committed for an obvious self-inflicted injury. Cory had never forgiven for her signing the papers that had locked him up when that thing had hunted him. When they released him, after his eighteenth birthday, she had put him on a bus with an extra roll of bandages, a bottle of rattling pills that hadn’t made it past the first stop off the bus, and a battered, duct-taped suitcase which hadn’t lasted past the second.

Luke had never seen a wound that had come over on a vampire after they woke up in their new life, but this mark had. “I wish you had gone with anyone besides me,” he told Cory, who only pulled his hand back under the covers and turned his back to Luke.

The message was loud and clear. Luke sighed and went back to sleep himself.

*

He woke up alone in bed, but Cory was nearby. Luke dressed in the dark and left the room. The tantalizing smell of coffee filled the first floor; he forgot Cory was such an early riser. He remembered in time that Cory made it stronger than he liked, yet another thing they argued about, but this time he just added tap water before taking his mug outside with him.

Cory was by the pond, watching the fish. They weren’t koi; Luke found them just a little pretentious. They were just goldfish, grown huge in the freedom Luke had allowed them.

“Where’s Joe?” Cory asked, instead of a hello. He was dressed in his jeans and a flannel shirt of Luke’s. It had been packed away with the rest of Luke’s winter weight clothes, so Cory must have gone hunting for it. 

“He went to the fish pond in the sky, Cory,” Luke said. “Sorry.”

Cory had picked out Joe and Billy himself years ago. Billy was still in the pond. He was the largest, most cantankerous of all nine, and as Luke spoke, Billy himself surfaced with a flash of orange and then swam out of sight to even their eyes.

“Oh.” Cory looked away. There weren’t a lot of flowers that were night blooming and could survive the climate so far north, but Luke had systematically hunted them down and brought them in. “For fuck sake, Luke,” Cory said, and shook his head. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?” Luke asked, feeling like Cory had just rolled up a newspaper and rapped him on the nose with it. 

“What do I mean?” Cory asked, and motioned all around him, at the flowers, the garden swing, the patio table. “You’re trying to re-create life here. You’re not…this isn’t…This isn’t why we are here! You’re hiding out.”

Luke clicked the mental stopwatch in his head. And they were off. “This is what I am,” he said between clenched teeth. “Forgive me if I’m not hiding out in an abandoned garage in an alley somewhere.”

“I’m not hiding out,” Cory snapped, then covered his mouth. “I’m sorry. I just—”

Luke stopped already forming his next insult in his head. Cory had never ever, not once, ever apologized or stopped his too quick tongue from cutting. “I didn’t come here to fight.”

“I’m not trying to—” Luke didn’t finish, either. He was never going to change Cory into a perfect companion, but that didn’t change the desire. “You seem to think there is more to this life. But there isn’t. We exist. We feed. But greater purpose? There isn’t one.”

“I don’t choose to believe that,” Cory said, and then for the first time in their relationship -- such as it was -- they actually arrived peacefully at an impasse. Cory shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. His gloves shone in the moonlight. “Can you at least drive me home?”

The change in him touched on some protective spot inside Luke that he’d thought was long dead. “You know I will. But why aren’t you going to fly?”

Cory looked up at him, and let the exhaustion show on his face. He’d slept well the night before, but Luke saw it was the first time in a long time. “There’s a bad wind blowing,” he said, simply. “And I don’t want to be in it. If it’s too much work, I can always take the C-Train.”

Luke didn’t point out that this comfortable life that disgusted Cory so much almost always included a car of some sort. Nor did he want Cory in the wind. In fact, as he stood there, the wind touched him for the first time. It stole the steam from his coffee, touched his hair, and tried to wrap itself around his neck. It wasn’t looking for him, but for Cory. “Stay,” he said, not meaning to say anything.

“What?”

“Stay here, with me. At least for the next little bit. There’s something going on here. I promise you there won’t be any strings.”

The pond’s heater kicked in and they both jumped at the knocking sound. It seemed to wake Cory up. He eyed Luke warily. “Do you have any blood packs?”

“A couple.”

Cory nodded and looked back up again. The stars were too bright; the cold night turned the air into a huge crystal, and if they weren’t careful, they’d be caught up in it. “Dibs on your O negative.”

Luke would have given up a lot more than his O negative stash if it meant them going inside again. “Agreed.”

*

Chapter Two

*

Lathe didn’t have to search very long to find the city Corbin had ended up in. The moment he reached Calgary’s city limits and crossed over the first river, the water had whispered Corbin’s location to him. It had woken Brutus, and Brutus never forgot a scent. Years ago Lathe had promised his wolf what remained of Cory after he used the young man to open the vortex and release the energy stored inside it. Cory’s escape had cheated them both.

It had taken him longer to find Calgary’s source of power. Unlike most major cities, especially cities that had bodies of water and a location so close to the mountains, the land here was empty and dead. There were hardly any vampires; two, in fact, if he counted Cory. It didn’t surprise him to find that Cory had got himself turned; he just wondered at the unfortunate bastard who turned him, or how long it had taken Cory to convince the other to take him. But if Cory thought that was enough to protect him, he was only delaying the fate Lathe had in mind for him, not circumventing it at all.

He’d used Cory to harness a small vortex in a northern town in British Columbia. It had been a school they’d used during a tuberculosis outbreak, and the deaths there created a block in the power lines the river brought into the town. Most of the cities had already been claimed by established vampire clans; Lathe didn’t want to share. Cory had been so close, and when he’d left, Lathe had tried to open it himself. But like a tick with its head buried in its victim, lopping off the body only poisoned the lines. He needed Cory, damn it. He needed to be able to transfer the vortex from feeding on the lines to feeding off the host that Cory would become, and then Lathe would kill the vortex and Cory at the same time.

And the fact that Calgary should have been rich with power lines running under the city told him there was another sort of drain on the lines. Another vortex. He’d been expecting something big, but nothing prepared him for how strong it actually was. They were so close to the bedrock here. The ground beneath his feet remembered what it was like to form mountains. And the people… Lathe took his pleasure from power more than anything, but his cock stirred at the thought of the slaves he would harvest. All that hot blood and willing lust would be welcome after his long search.

The restaurant was in the middle of two rivers converging, and it seemed smaller than its dimensions. It hadn’t taken him much to set the fire inside the kitchen, nothing major, mind, only enough to gut the kitchen itself, and it took very little to convince the proprietors to just wait on the restoration work. There had been a large squawk about it, but eventually it died down, and the restaurant was his. From there, it was just a matter for the weather to take a colder turn, which would let Brutus out.

A banging came from upstairs. It wasn’t Brutus, who was waiting patiently for true dark by the door and unable to take physical form quite yet. Lathe stood up, climbing up the staircase to the main level. The building had been a restaurant for so long it reeked of humans and their filthy habits, but it hadn’t always had such an innocuous existence. People had died here, and died violently. There had been a suicide on the third floor, a murder/suicide on the second, and the memory of an older convalescing patient who had been tossed down the stairs. When that hadn’t finished the job, a stout branch had. They were all still there and the other — Luke, Lathe had learned — would be able to pick up more from them than he could. 

They were all effects, however, and not the cause. Lathe took the stairs up to the second floor. No tables were set up here, no banquet space despite the view of the river from the windows. The only thing in the room was a huge book case against the near wall, with a dollhouse-size model of the house. He stepped onto the second floor landing. He had to go past the public washrooms that had been converted from other rooms. A woman wept eternally to herself in the women’s toilet. He ignored her.

The window was no longer visible. A blue light came from just before it, and obliterated it completely. It was a sickly blue, almost purple, like the color of a freshly bloomed bruise, and it swirled maliciously in its place.

“Hello,” Lathe said. The angry blue light reached for him and tried to pull energy from him, but it was weak, and made weaker by its lack of victims. The restaurant owners must have recognized it, if not understood it, for what it was; the restaurant closed at three p.m. and didn’t open until ten the next morning. The vortex worked best at night when it could insinuate itself into dreams.

The light slid off Lathe harmlessly. There was nothing left inside him to corrupt. The circle pulsed once, sullenly, and then withdrew from him.

The power lines to the city, the ones that were designed for Lathe and Lathe’s kind, were being consumed by this thing, like a leech swollen with the blood of its host. It was a good thing Cory had made himself stronger; he would need that extra bit of strength to contain it all. “Soon,” Lathe told the vortex. He’d have to encourage it to enter the new host, but that was easily enough done, and it would know mortal death.

The vortex pulsed again, furious, but it had no voice to protest with. There was no malicious thought behind it. It just was. And like all thoughtless beasts, it would serve Lathe in whatever way he demanded, resentful or otherwise.

True darkness finally arrived. Lathe was safe in the twilight once the sun set, but Brutus needed the absolute dark to become physically present. Lathe went downstairs to free the beast.

Brutus scrambled across the wooden patio, his claws leaving half-inch scratches through the paint and into the treated wood beneath. He was still mostly smoke and shadow, but his claws and teeth were fully formed. 

Lathe let him play, if that was the word for it, for a moment. When Brutus pounced on a moth he’d been stalking, the grass beneath his paws withered and died as he sapped the meager life from the insect. 

“Brutus,” Lathe said. The great beast stopped and looked at him, ears pricked. He was now whole, but his black eyes were so dark they reflected nothing. “Find him,” Lathe continued. The words had to be said out loud to bind Brutus to them.

Brutus sat up and howled at the moon. In the distance, a barking dog yelped like a trapped puppy and was silent. The entire neighborhood held its breath, Lathe felt, and then Brutus turned. He sniffed the air, cocked his head, and was off, leaping from pooled shadow to pooled shadow, appearing fully formed from each new jump.

Lathe followed. Corbin had nested close to the vortex, knowingly or otherwise, just on the other side of the other river and up the hill. Twice he had to call Brutus back. The cold snap hadn’t been long enough to drive the homeless into shelters, and Brutus had to cross downtown to get to Corbin. The homeless, those too far gone in their own personal hell to ever come back, recognized Brutus for what he was. As Brutus passed their hovels and cardboard castles, Lathe heard the ones still awake draw back in terror and the sleeping ones cry out for their mothers or their bottles, whichever they held dearer.

But Brutus was on a mission, and wouldn’t be distracted from it. He leapt ahead, taking massive bounds, and when he had to wait for Lathe, his entire body shook with resentment.

They had to cross another river. This one was older and deeper than the other by the vortex. It brought with it the scrapings from the mountains. Soon, Lathe would be in control of the potential energy, and he found himself quivering as well. Soon.

Brutus led him down a new street, then another and another. Each one was less lit than the last, until it was dark enough that Brutus could heel beside him, and the touch of his breath, the ender of life, was welcomed on the back of Lathe’s thigh. 

The garage behind the steeple-roof white and green house was not used to house vehicles, as did the rest of the freestanding structures in the alley. The owner of the garage had tried to keep the unwanted visitors away, from an angry yellow “no trespassing” sign to the hundreds of nail holes holding the two-by-fours in place. The nails currently in use were three inches long, but Cory had obviously burrowed down and under. Lathe would be damned more than he already was if he did the same thing.

Instead, he put his hand up, pressing it against the wood. It didn’t take much to force the decay already in the wood to swell and reject the new steel in it. One by one, with a sickening squelch the wood pushed out the nails.

“Hey!” Lathe heard behind him. He turned as the sound of the metal hinges of the gate reached him. It was the owner of the house. He was taller than most humans and the hair on his head was crazy around his face. “You can’t just—“

Brutus, lolling by Lathe’s feet, perked up. He didn’t growl, not in the presence of prey, but Lathe felt the hunger from him. 

Whether the human saw the great beast by Lathe’s feet was irrelevant. Some did, some didn’t. It was better if they did see; at least then they understood their role in the universe. Lathe looked at the human, wanting to see the dawn of comprehension on his doomed face. “Um, never mind,” the human said, reaching behind him for the gate. This one was smarter than most of his ilk. “Please.”

“We do mind,” Lathe said, and then nodded. “Take him.” Brutus was up in the next second. The human had been standing in the shadow of an old, dead tree, and that was where Brutus erupted from, fully formed. There was no blood, not even as Brutus’s jaws clamped down. Brutus wasn’t actually biting. Everything from the human’s silent scream to his desperate attempt to protect his vulnerable throat was absorbed through Brutus’s cold touch.

The grass in the alley was already shocked from the cold, but as Brutus fed he bled out the last bit of stored color in it. The brown shadow spread through the fence to the bushes that still held the ghost of blooming flowers. Brutus poisoned the roots. The already hibernating wood died and crumbled. It even stretched to the climbing ivy running up the walls of the house. The vines dropped free from their hooks and roots and fell to the ground in a brown shower of leaves.

There was nothing left of the human by the time Brutus stepped free from the newly scorched earth. He licked his lips and whined up at Lathe. Lathe scratched the back of the beast’s ears, feeling the ice cold skin, and then kicked the door to the garage the rest of the way open.

Cory wasn’t inside. Lathe didn’t know why that was such a disappointment. The interior wasn’t sun proof, but Corbin had solved that problem by burrowing under the abandoned car and letting the iron underside protect him from the sun. It wouldn’t have been a perfect nest; he would have had restless, painful dreams, but he was still young. Long black feathers lined the pit, with the plume end smelling of Cory’s blood, and Lathe saw Cory pull out his own pin feathers in order to make the nest homier and to protect himself from the worst of the dreams. He knew Cory wasn’t beyond a little pain to solve his problems.

“Where did you go, my little bird?” Lathe asked. The silent garage failed to answer him.

But Brutus would. “Go. Find him.”

Brutus howled again, and was gone. Lathe couldn’t keep up, not in the time he had left of the night, but Brutus would lie low in a cold, dark place and let him know the next evening where he was. He returned to the restaurant to sleep.

*

Chapter Three

*

Cory found more than blood in the fridge. He pulled out two beers, opened them over the sink, and poured them into glasses. The downstairs rec room actually had a wood burning fireplace, as opposed to the hermetically sealed gas fireplace upstairs, and they sat on the floor in front of it. Luke took the warmed blood pack first. Cory had already fed; that was obvious from the flushed cheeks. 

The plastic gave way to his fangs reluctantly, and once he breeched the seal, it didn’t hold tension like human skin. But the harmless chemicals suspending the blood kept it alive for them to feed from. He drained it, feeling his body assimilate the blood inside him. He opened his eyes, for that second hyper-alert to everything around him. If this has been the bad old days, he would have pinned Cory to the table and fucked him until neither one of them could move, but that item was off the menu. Cory smiled ruefully, obviously thinking the same thing, so Luke raised the glass of beer instead. “It wasn’t all that bad,” he said. 

“It wasn’t,” Cory agreed. “But it wasn’t all my fault, either.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Luke took another drink, then held the glass between his fingertips. “Did you find it?” 

“Find what?” Cory was curious, not defensive, and it wasn’t a tone Luke was much used to.

“Your greater purpose. The thing you left me for.”

“I didn’t leave you,” Cory said. “You’d all but packed up my things and threw them out on your sun-drenched lawn.”

“You killed someone, Cory.”

“I killed a human,” Cory said, voice dark. “And he needed killing.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Dead humans bring police officers —”

“Not that one,” Cory said. He’d been a worker in a shelter, a volunteer who brought juice jugs around to all the tables and brought the younger, prettier young men to the storage room. It had come out in the investigation, and with so many potential motives for the crime, it stalled out. But it meant that they probably had Cory’s fingerprints on record now. 

“We can’t afford the attention.”

“And I couldn’t let him keep doing it.”

“Have you done it since?”

Cory’s eyes were blank for half a dozen seconds, then he shook his head. “No,” he said, finally. “It’s not safe. So if you’re asking me if I thought my grander purpose was to become some sort of winged crusader, the answer’s no.”

He dared Luke to say anything along the lines of I told you so, so Luke didn’t. Cory waited, tense on the edge of his chair, his body preparing for another argument. Luke put down the glass and stood up. Cory watched him approach with narrowed eyes. Luke pushed his shoulders against the chair, and although his entire body was tense, he didn’t fight. Luke pulled Cory’s hips to the edge of the recliner.

Cory’s mouth tightened, and his entire body tensed as Luke knelt down in front of him. “What are you —” he began, but then Luke undid his jeans and Cory didn’t finish the rest of the now redundant question.

Luke looked up, meeting Cory’s gaze. Cory was motionless, just for a second, and then relaxed. “Yes, please,” he said finally. 

He was half hard already; he always was when they fought. Luke pulled the jeans further down Cory’s thighs, thought about keeping them high enough to trap his legs, but knew that Cory would hate it, so he took the time to take them all the way off. Cory spread his legs and touched Luke’s shoulder lightly with the tips of two fingers. There was a thank you in the touch, but it didn’t need to be said. 

Luke debated not kissing the insides of Cory’s thigh. It seemed, for the moment too forward, too familiar, but then Cory took his head, pushing him not toward his cock, but further down, to the start of his inner thigh. Luke smiled and pressed his tongue against the white skin. He found the femoral buried deep, and kissed where it branched off. Cory’s sigh caught in his vocal cords in that second, and what came out was half a strangled groan. Luke tried it again; moving up a quarter inch and kissing that spot as well, but raked his nails across the same spot on his other leg. The scratch remained white for less than a second then erupted scarlet against the skin, and Cory’s hands tightened in Luke’s hair.

Interesting. He slapped the inside of Cory’s upper thigh, and his hand print came to the surface as well, hot, and pink. Cory shuddered, his hands pulling Luke’s head up, but Luke fought the grip, and eventually Cory stopped trying to force it. Luke slapped the other side, harder, then back to the first side again, and if he had electrocuted Cory, he didn’t think the response could have been more dramatic. Cory’s eyelashes were damp, but his lips were parted, and as soon as Luke finished, he thrust his hips up and off the chair. 

“Again?” Luke asked.

Cory nodded. His shoulders were the only thing that touched the chair now, the rest of his body stretched like a bowstring. 

“Would you prefer the paddle?” Luke asked, keeping his voice neutral.

Cory pulled back, but only for a second. It wouldn’t hurt as much as the hand in the long run, but the initial sting would be so much worse. Or better, if that was what Cory wanted. Cory reached behind him, bracing himself against the wall as well. “That didn’t answer the question,” Luke said.

“Yes, the paddle,” Cory said, and his voice caught. “Please.”

Luke ran his nails along both inner thighs. Cory’s cock was hot against his belly, now achingly hard, even though neither of them had touched it yet. “Can you keep yourself open like this for me?”

Cory fought, twisting in ways Luke didn’t think the body was meant to, but he nodded. “I will. Just…hurry.”

“What if I want you to wait?” Luke asked, but stood up.

Cory bucked again, pleading in ways he couldn’t let himself say, but then he settled. “Then I’ll wait,” he said, voice low.

“Good boy,” Luke said, and went back to his bedroom. They hadn’t had a lot of toys in their relationship; they hadn’t really needed it. Sex was the one part of them that hadn’t needed work. But Luke had managed to collect a single leather paddle; smooth on one side, suede on the other, a set of nipple clamps they’d tried once and hadn’t used again, and a finger vibrator that he thought he’d given to Cory when they’d broken up. He gathered up the former and the latter, and took a moment at the door to the storeroom to watch Cory shift his weight back and forth. But he never once sat down. His eyes were closed, but his lips were still parted. And he was beautiful.

He must have heard Luke approach, even as Luke tried to walk silently, because he relaxed, even managing a smile. “Did you miss me?” Luke asked.

Cory didn’t answer. Luke brought the paddle down hard, just above his knee. The skin immediately turned pink, and Cory reared back, pushing toward Luke, not away from. His breath, though he didn’t truly need to take one, came in a ragged gasp, and he rode out the pain with a series of bucks. “You can say it,” Luke said.

“Holy fuck,” Cory said, the words harsh against his dry throat. He gasped another lungful of air, but held it because he could. Luke reversed the paddle, scratching his way up to Cory’s testicles tight against his body, and when he scraped across the base of his balls, Cory shuddered again. “Another?” he asked, and slapped Cory’s ass, only getting a few inches of swing, and it was light enough that it didn’t count. “Cory?” Luke asked, when Cory didn’t answer, but it took another, slightly harder slap on the other ass cheek to bring Cory back to him.

“Yes,” Cory hissed, the word barely escaping his clenched teeth. “Please.”

“Here?” Luke asked, pressing the smooth end a breath away from the crux of Cory’s thigh. The muscles here were so tight against the surface it brought the femoral up against the skin. Cory thrust his hips, silently begging, but whether it was for the spot or against it, Luke didn’t understand. He brought the paddle lower, moving it at an angle. “Here, then,” he whispered. Cory opened and closed his mouth, but Luke brought it down on his other leg, hard, and just a quarter inch away from the first blow. Luke’s entire body went rigid. “Let it out,” Luke said. “It’s not good to keep things contained.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Cory managed. He was sweating now, his black hair plastered down and his face reddening, but he was every bit as beautiful as he’d ever been.

“Is that an invitation?” Luke asked. “Have you had enough? All you have to do is sit down again.” He undid his own slacks, taking out his hard cock and pressed it against the reddened patch of skin he’d made. “Can you feel how hard I am for you? How much I’d like to pull you down to the carpet and fuck you? Don’t prolong this for my sake. Just sit down, Cory.”

“No,” Cory snarled. “Just do it. Higher.”

“Higher?” Luke asked. “Are you sure?”

Luke didn’t think it was possible, but Cory spread his legs farther. Luke smiled, though Cory couldn’t see him, and he brought the paddle down, harder yet, on the exact same spot as the first time. Cory howled, his entire body jerking, but he remained up. “Are you going to tell me what to do next time?” Luke asked, mildly.

“No,” Cory gasped. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. Please.” He was fucking the air, but couldn’t have gotten any relief from either his cock or the pain from his thighs. “Whatever you want. Please.”

“Are you sure? Do you want to settle anything else out through a committee?”

Cory whined, but kept his legs wide open for Luke. “Whatever you want,” he said in a low whisper. “I’m yours.”

Luke hesitated, but didn’t respond to what Cory had just said. He’d said a lot more to his master in similar situations, and talk during sex was never admissible in arguments later on. He brought the paddle down, lazily, about three quarters of the way up Cory’s thigh on both legs. No pain, not this time, just a low sting. “Like that?”

A pool of pre-cum had gathered on Cory’s belly. “Yes,” Cory hissed, bracing himself for the next blow, but instead he left the paddle casually, deliberately up against Cory’s testicles and dipped his fingers into the cum. “You’re getting off on this,” he said. It wasn’t a question; the evidence was pretty much spoke for itself. He brought his fingers up to Cory’s mouth. “Open.”

Cory parted his lips, sticking his tongue out, but Luke brought his fingers inside instead. “Suck.”

And Cory sucked. Luke kept his hand still, so Cory moved his head up and down, performing mock fellatio on the long fingers until there wasn’t a trace left of the pre-cum. Luke withdrew, and Cory made a disappointed sound in the back of his throat.

“You can sit down,” Luke told him. “We can skip all this.”

Cory shook his head, and locked his thighs. 

Luke ran his fingers along the inside of Cory’s legs. “I forgot how stubborn you are.”

“I didn’t,” Cory said. Luke slapped him for it, but gently, barely making a sound. Cory shuddered and then audibly shut his mouth. 

The next one stung. Cory jerked, but he was ready for it. He thrust his hips up, slowly. Luke let him find a rhythm, and he matched it. Sometimes he barely slapped the skin, and sometimes he brought it down so hard that Cory had to stop to ride out the sensation. The insides of his thighs were red with blood close to the surface, and the sounds coming from Cory were needy, pathetic things.

“Do you want a count to ten?” Luke asked, softly. It would be ten very hard blows, evenly spaced apart, but then it would be over, and he wouldn’t have asked Cory to give in. He took Cory’s cock in his hand, feeling how close he was to coming — so close Luke could feel the spasms under his fingers. 

“Yes,” Cory said. He let the word catch, then slide out of him. “Please.”

“Do you want to count?” he asked.

Cory didn’t answer, but he shook his head, and that was enough. His entire body was tired, and he could barely keep his body open. Perhaps Luke had overdone it, considering that it was the first time in a while. Ten blows, each one methodical almost to the point of being mechanical, and each one jerked Cory up. His breath came in ragged gasps to help dispel the pain. When Luke reached ten, he dropped the paddle like a live wire, grabbed onto Cory’s hips and supported his weight. He took Cory’s cock down his throat, already feeling him starting to come. Cory grabbed the back of his head, pushing him farther down, and when there was no more down to go, began fucking his mouth. If Luke needed to breath, he probably would have choked, but he didn’t, and Cory used the last of his energy to thrust himself down Luke’s throat while he came.

He collapsed in a boneless heap in the couch, broken and sweating. There was room for them both in the oversized couch. Cory was too far gone, but Luke was still hard. It only took a second to collect Cory’s spilled precum. Cory kept his legs close together, and Luke slid inside him. He needed hardly anything, watching Cory give himself over to riding the pain. He closed his eyes, kissing his way down Cory’s neck, and when he came, gently compared to the rest of the evening, Cory let him stay inside.

*

They slept for over an hour, while the moon set above them. The cold wind shifted. Luke felt it go. He untangled himself from Cory, who woke during the operation but just turned on his hip and closed his eyes again. As much as Luke wanted to tug Cory along behind him and just go back to bed, he hadn’t locked down the house for the day. The back door was open, leaving just the screen door closed. Luke hesitated, sure that he had closed it behind them. He opened the screen door, staring out to the garden, but didn’t see anything different from when he’d gone out with Cory to the pond. It was late for humans. The bars would have already closed, and it was a very quiet neighborhood. But something was different. Something was wrong.

He felt it first. Silent, but like a freight train in all things but noise. The ground shook beneath his feet; the air trembled. For a second it was impossible to move, but he shook off the physiological response and stepped back into the house. That wasn’t the protection he needed. The shadows across the porch from the neighbor’s poplars swirled at his feet. He saw teeth and fangs. He felt frozen to the spot, both from the freezing wind that enveloped him and from the sudden fear that this was it. He was being consumed. He tried to turn his head, to warn Cory to get out even if it was with his last breath, then the porch light turned on. Warm, yellow light spilled out from the single hundred watt bulb. The shadow yelped as though in pain, and then retreated back to the fence, to where the porch light couldn’t reach. It didn’t disappear completely, but manipulated a fence post here, a shadow from a tree branch there, an electrical pole inches from the end of the light. The teeth and claws and black eyes waited.

“What is that thing?” Luke managed, feeling as though he’d sucked off a shark skin dildo. 

“It’s a wolf,” Cory said, staring out the glass door. The beast snarled, lunging at the light, but where it struck the line of yellow his flesh hissed and turned to an oily smoke, only to reform later under the fence. “More or less.”

His voice was far away, and colder than Luke had ever heard before, even when they were in their death knell. “I’m more interested in the more than the less,” Luke said, and rubbed his throat. He knew he should have felt teeth marks in his skin, but it was unbroken. Ice cold to the touch, but intact.

“Lathe is here,” Cory said. “He’s found me. You should get in the shower before the chill spreads.”

“I don’t—” Luke began, but Cory looked at him with cold eyes. 

“It can’t reach us with the ring of light, and Lathe won’t look for us tonight; it’s too late. Go have a shower.”

Luke moved his jaw. Sure enough, he felt the chill start to spread up and down his throat from the bite. “Better make it a bath,” Cory decided, and turned away, back to the wolf. He’d changed back to his own shirt, and the turtleneck formed to his upper body. 

“That’s an east facing window,” Luke said, before his vocal cords froze over completely. “Just be careful.”

“I will,” Cory said. Luke touched his cheek, but then left him to go upstairs. He ran the water as hot as he could manage. The chill had entered his blood stream, making every move feel awkward and clumsy. He didn’t understand anything, but knew if he had stayed and argued the point a second longer, he probably couldn’t have gotten into the tub in time. It was a Japanese soaker tub, and even half way full, he knew it wasn’t going to be hot enough. He snapped off what little cold water there was. When the tub was full, it still wasn’t enough. His body chilled the water, so he just let the hot water run and let the overflow valve do its work.

A while later, how long Luke didn’t know, the bathroom door opened. “It’s gone,” Cory said from the door. The fog in the room was so thick Luke couldn’t see him, but he felt the cold air from the opened door. “How are you?”

“I’ll live,” Luke said, sitting up. “In a manner of speaking. Are you going to tell me what that thing was?”

“I told you.”

“A wolf. Yes, I heard. But a wolf isn’t made of shadow and doesn’t bite with frost.”

“It’s Lathe’s… Pet’s the wrong word. Servant? Familiar? It doesn’t really matter what you call it. It belongs to Lathe, and that means Lathe will know by tomorrow where I am.”

“Lathe,” Luke repeated. He didn’t have to look down to Cory’s clenched, scarred fist. Luke knew what he was talking about. “Did you really think all it would take is to be turned to put you on equal footing with him?”

“It was a start,” Cory said. “It at least put us —”

“On the same playing field? Was that what you were going to say? Believe me, Cory, anyone that could pull that thing up from cold and frost is not going to be equal to anything you can manage in a century. In two centuries, to be perfectly honest. You have no idea how powerful that thing is.”

“My name is Corbin,” Cory said, voice cold even as he cradled his hand to his chest. “And you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

He turned. Luke knew he was going for the front door, probably before Cory knew. He was up and out of the tub, running dripping behind him, but Cory had too much of a head start. He kept his human shape only long enough to manage the door. The moment the heavy wooden front door was open, he was up in the sky. It would have been be a beautiful thing to watch, if Luke hadn’t been so horrified. One moment he was wholly a man, the next he was a beautiful black bird, beating its wings as though trying to find purchase in the wind itself. The feeling of the freight train was back. Luke threw on the light, and by the time Cory was out of the protective circle, he was too high for the beast to do anything more than snap at where he’d once been. Against all Luke’s self-preservation, he stepped out into the ring of light, just to call back to Cory, but Cory was already gone. The beast growled, a low, furious thing, and Luke stepped back inside, locking the door but leaving every light in the house on before retiring to the basement.

*

Chapter Four

*

Lathe frowned as Brutus slunk into the shadows back to the restaurant with his tail between his legs, metaphorically speaking. So Cory had gotten away. Lathe hadn’t thought Cory would leave his lover. Or maybe he knew that Lathe had no interest in the other. From above, he heard the scraping of the suicide victim’s shoes. He was suddenly hungry. Brutus waited for him down by the back door, dejected. “Go, find me a meal,” he said, and Brutus leapt to obey. The paths lit around the restaurant were full of stumbling drunks and people trying to sleep in the hollows of trees; Brutus would find one for him that would scream.

And Brutus didn’t disappoint. The young man he herded toward the back door was young enough that the alcohol in his system still dulled the pain inside him, but it hadn’t had enough exposure to do serious damage to his internal organs. Brutus herded him down the stairs before disappearing in the first of the sun’s rays over the horizon. The human had fallen to the back of the storeroom, and Lathe smiled, licking his lips. It had been weeks since the last time he’d had the time to properly play with his food.

* * * * * 

Cory took to the sky. The sun was coming and there was no protection against that. But while he flew, it no longer mattered just for a little bit. He didn’t need to be told that something horrible had gone down in his nest; the scorched earth by the gate and the dead yard full of plants was enough. He could smell Lathe everywhere. 

And he was running out of time. He crossed the river again, going back downtown, and ducked into the deepest parking garage. He took on human form again when it was too difficult to fly so low among the cars, and then walked the rest of the way down. B4 was the lowest level, and there was only one car there. He jumped up, becoming a bird again, and spent the day roosting up in the rafters. 

It wasn’t that Lathe had held him down; Cory had wanted it that way. But Lathe had played him, promising him one thing, while all the while opening him up for something else. He felt the changes inside him, and the fact that Lathe hadn’t realized he’d become aware showed just how little regard Lathe had for him. And that made him burn with anger colder than the wind, yet perversely kept him warm through the day.

* * * * * 

The next evening, Luke pulled up in front of the restaurant, leaving the brights of his car on. He got out of the car and leaned on the horn until the front door opened. Lathe stepped out, with the wolf at his feet. “So, you’re him,” Lathe said. Brutus padded down the stairs to the grass, growling loud enough to send the sleeping birds in the trees to flight. Luke reached through the open window and clicked on his six-mile flashlight; the brightest flashlight he could find in the entire city. Brutus winked out of existence with a puff of smoke. 

He lifted the beam up and straight into Lathe’s eyes. Lathe fell back against the wall, covering his face. “Leave Cory alone,” Luke snapped. 

“Cory belongs to me.” Lathe crossed his arms over his chest. 

“You want something from this place,” Luke said. He kept the spotlight trained on Lathe and in the bright white of the headlights he knew was perfectly safe from Brutus. He took the steps up two at a time. “You had better find someone other than Cory, because I swear I will burn this place to the ground around you if you even so much as try to hurt him.”

“I made him,” Lathe said, but uncover his face. 

Luke threw Lathe down the stairs to the hard, cold ground . He lashed out, one blow catching Lathe in the belly, and then another snapping Lathe’s head back. “Don’t even start,” Luke snarled.

Lathe held up his hands, then used his right one to cradle his belly. “You’re not a killer, Luke. You’re barely a threatener. If you weren’t terrified for your precious placeholder’s life, you wouldn’t be here at all. So spare me your tough guy.”

“My placeholder?” Luke asked.

“Come on. You might have turned him, but you didn’t want him. Not really. Not truly.” Lathe grinned, wiping the blood from his mouth. 

“You bastard,” Luke said, softly. Lathe began to bow, but Luke brought up the flashlight faster than he thought possible. It whipped Lathe across the face, and when the metal hit, Luke heard the tinkling of broken teeth. Lathe’s mouth exploded in blood. Luke kicked him again, reaching for the stake he had under his jacket, but before he could bring it out, Lathe was back up again, his fist over Luke’s hand on the wooden stake, hard enough to break fingers. Lathe didn’t waste any energy, but threw Luke back to Luke’s car, and then pinned him by the throat to the hood. Luke kicked out, catching Lathe on the knee, and although he hit hard enough to hear bone crunch, Lathe didn’t let him go. 

The right side of his face was full of broken teeth, and flecks of them hit Luke in the mouth as Lathe laughed. “Pathetic. This is all you got? A Duracell commercial and a piece of white picket fence? You were going to take me out with this?” Lathe ripped open Luke’s shirt, but Luke didn’t feel the cold on his bare skin, just the smooth cut end of the stake. “Beg me not to kill you.”

“No,” Luke said. Lathe raised the stake high over both their heads, and Luke couldn’t stop himself squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Beg me!”

“Go to hell!”

Lathe reversed the stake and smashed it down into Luke’s shoulder. The pain was muted with the adrenaline in his system, but he knew he’d be feeling it later. It still stole the thought from his head and left him broken. In the trees, a bird cawed, and for a second it sounded like Cory. Lathe picked him up by the throat. “I should feed you to Brutus and laugh as he finishes the job he started last night,” he said. “But maybe I would like to drink from you until there’s nothing left to bleed first.”

Something black landed on the grass, and a moment later Cory stood up. “Leave him alone,” he said, quietly.

“Oh, Cory. How good of you to join us. I thought you’d at least wait until after I slit your ex-lover’s throat.”

“Get out of here,” Luke managed, though it hurt to take the breath necessary to form the words. “What are you doing?”

“Saving you,” Cory said. “Let him go, Lathe.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I let him go, you fly away, and I’ll have nothing.”

Cory stepped into the light. He picked up the flashlight, turned it off, and then reached into the car a second later and killed the headlights. Brutus came back with a snarl, and backed Cory away from where Lathe stood with his nails still digging into Luke’s throat. “Now you hold all the cards. Please. I’m here. You can do what you want with me, just let Luke go.”

“I could have you both,” Lathe said.

“But that was never the plan now, was it?” Cory said with an easy smile. He was so good at this. He even reached up and took Lathe’s arm, the one that was holding Luke down. He tugged on his glove with his teeth, putting his marked hand over Lathe’s. “Let him go. Please.”

“You swear on his life that you will not try to escape?” Lathe snarled, baring his fangs.

“On his life,” Cory said, tracing lines down Lathe’s arm. “I swear.”

“What are you doing, Cory?” Luke demanded, once Lathe backed away enough for Luke to breathe. He grabbed Lathe’s wrist, but Lathe was stronger than he was and just used Luke’s grip to pull Luke up and throw him aside. Brutus was on him in the next second, his teeth inches from Luke’s throat, and his tissue remembered how cold it had been. He didn’t want to, but his arms came up to protect his throat. “I told you to let him go,” Cory snapped.

“Once you go inside the house,” Lathe said. “Step past the threshold and I’ll let him go.”

“Swear on your life,” Cory said.

“Cory, don’t,” Luke called, and Brutus growled more. “Don’t do this. Please.” Luke didn’t dare move, not with the great beast over him, so he rested his head on the cold, frozen ground. 

“You should have let me handle it,” Cory said, voice flat. “I have your word?” 

“You do,” Lathe said with a bow. “After you.”

“After me,” Cory repeated. The restaurant’s front door was glowing a sick blue color, and even from where Luke was lying he watched the former occupants—the weeping woman, the suicide victim, the man with the razor blade, all beckoning Cory inside. “No!” Luke cried, and cried out as Brutus put one of his huge paws squarely onto Luke’s chest. He felt the bones bend with the weight.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” Cory repeated. He turned, face hard. “Those things I said to you this evening, I want you to know that I meant every single word of them.” He stepped backward into the light. There was another pulse of brilliant light, and then the front door slammed shut. Brutus growled again, waiting for permission from his master to tear Luke’s throat out, and Lathe left him flat against his back for a very long moment.

“Isn’t that sweet,” Lathe said, mockingly. “I should kill you regardless.” 

Luke closed his eyes again. In that second, it didn’t really matter anymore, and if Lathe was looking for more of a reaction, Luke at least took pleasure in that. “If you’re going to do it, do it,” he said.

“A century of hiding out, protecting your little ‘life’ as it were, and that’s the most self-preservation you have? Frankly, I am disappointed.”

A sliver of drool from Brutus’s teeth dripped onto Luke’s skin, and ran down the curve of Luke’s jaw, burning his flesh with the cold. He didn’t swallow. “And I would be disappointed if you didn’t kill me. Just do it.”

“No,” Lathe said, as though he’d just come to that decision. He probably just had. “I won’t. You’ll survive, and you can take with you the memory of what your little lover did for you when you couldn’t be half arsed about him.”

Luke snorted. It showed what Lathe knew, and he didn’t bother to correct him. Brutus let him go, and when Luke sat up, things shifted in his chest that never should have been able to move. He went to his car, the keys still in the ignition, and every step he took he still expected to feel Brutus’s teeth on him.

“For your information, Luke, if you had staked me the moment you put the flashlight on me, you would have taken me out,” Lathe said. 

“If you hurt him,” Luke said, but his words felt flat even to him. 

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Lathe said, and smiled for the first time. “I’m going to kill him. Go now, boy, or you’ll be joining him.”

Brutus snarled. “I can’t leave him,” Luke said, even as Brutus snapped at his leg. He jerked back. 

“Get in the car and drive off. This is your last warning. I go back inside, Brutus will have his fill. Corbin made his choice for you. Are you just going to throw it away?”

Luke got into the car, put it into reverse, and drove away. The car bounced as it drove over the curve. He couldn’t quite believe he was driving away, but when he looked up, he saw Cory staring out the second story window. He wasn’t dead; surely it wasn’t time for that to have already happened, but his face was stony. Luke stopped the car, staring up, but Cory shook his head and motioned him to go on. “I can’t,” he said, knowing Cory couldn’t hear him, but he was shaking his head again.

You have to.

There was no arguing that. He put the car into drive and rolled off.

* 

Cory thought that Lathe would have been right behind him going into the restaurant, but he wasn’t. Cory’s naked hand, the glove dropped somewhere along the yard, ached here, especially now that he was so close to Lathe, but he ignored it. Part of the main floor had been gutted by a fire and half the tables and chairs were missing, but from where he stood it could have been any restaurant in any converted house.

That was until he heard the crying on the second floor. The staircase was two flights up, and he found himself on the second floor before he even really thought about it. Something was up here; he felt that for certain. Luke would have felt it right away. Luke himself was standing by his car in the lawn, battered and bruised, but still alive, and Cory willed him to just get into the car and drive. Luke refused, however, until Brutus was practically over him again. Then he reluctantly got into the driver’s side. If Cory could have put the car into gear from where he stood, he would have. It wasn’t until Luke had actually done it and driven off the grass that he looked up to the window where Cory stood. Their eyes met, Luke telling him even from where he was that he didn’t want to go, but Cory shook his head. “You have to,” he said, to the empty room.

Luke drove away, slowly, and Cory watched his tail lights until they crossed the river. Then Luke pulled over to the side of the road. Cory touched the window, which should have been freezing; the upstairs didn’t have any heat, and he’d been cold when he was outside. His bare skin touched the glass, something he wasn’t really used to, but it was hot, almost too hot to touch. The iron brand on the back of his hand flared up, hotter than it had felt with the actual iron, and he jerked his hand back.

“Your boyfriend is quite something,” Lathe said, stepping up into the room. “He’s been out of the game for so long he forgets what he is, and yet he would have given it all up for you. That must have been a disappointment for you.”

“Not at all,” Cory said, turning around. His hand burned, and he still felt cold. It wasn’t quite fair, but he kept his face neutral. His father had taught him that, even if he was breaking inside. And he was. If he’d known... Stop it, he told himself. He would have done the same thing. Going back to Luke’s house the night before had been his first mistake and staying had been his second. Sleeping with Luke was his third and letting Luke play with his body his fourth. It would have been a clean separation, but he’d been staking out the house since the fire, having tasted Lathe’s influence in the burning smoke, but when he saw Luke down by the water, he just couldn’t stay away. Cory cleared his throat. “He did what he was supposed to.”

“Spare me,” Lathe said. He looked down to Cory’s naked hand, stark white in all the black, and then back up to Cory’s face. His smile was a bloody maw, his broken human teeth ragged and cutting. Cory saw his throat sliced open on them, and himself bleeding out in this room. But it was Lathe’s eyes he couldn’t look away from. He was falling forward, dizzy suddenly, and Lathe pinned him against the wall to keep him on the floor. 

“Can you hear me?” Lathe asked, but he wasn’t speaking with his mouth of broken teeth. He was inside Cory’s head, and Cory couldn’t push him out. He was so tired all of a sudden. It would just be so easy to fall forward and let Lathe take what he needed. But he couldn’t. Even the dumbest mark could see deception if it was present, so Cory kept his brain perfectly empty.

“You need your glove to turn, don’t you? You can’t do it if your hand is exposed. That’s how it works, isn’t it? That’s how you figured it out?”

“I need black to turn into a raven, yes,” Cory said, the words forced from him. “Won’t work, otherwise.”

“Good,” Lathe whispered. And that was spoken. Blood and spit hit Cory’s face, and he couldn’t raise his hands to wipe it off. “Strip down completely.”

“So cold,” he protested. But it wasn’t, not really, not by the window. As long as he wasn’t touching it with his bad hand. Lathe grabbed his tee-shirt with one hand. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Cory whispered. He used his good hand to pull Lathe’s hand free, finger by finger, but kept his bad hand clenched behind him. He’d had to learn how to do most things one-handed while the burn was healing, so it didn’t take much to strip his jacket off. He let the clothes stay where they fell, but Lathe shook his head and collected each article of clothing as it fell. His shirt was next, then his shoes, and finally jeans, which took more work. He kicked them free, too. Lathe picked them up as well, smiling at him. 

“If you’re trying to humiliate me, you’ll have to work harder,” Cory said. He stood, his feet apart, and he brought his right hand down his throat, to his chest, and then down to his belly. “For fifty bucks, I’ll give you a happy ending first.”

Lathe had him up against the wall, again, his groin up against Cory’s. “Do you really want me to try harder?” he demanded, and grabbed Cory’s chin. He forced his head up, and try as Cory might to look away, Lathe dragged it out of him. “Do you know the things I could make you do?”

And Cory knew he was supposed to look into Lathe’s eyes and see the hell waiting for him. Instead he pressed his bad hand against the window. He winced, but not because of Lathe. “Yes,” he hissed. The pain lancing up and down his arm wouldn’t let him form any other word. Lathe let him go, and Cory broke contact from the glass. He felt the cold sweat on his body, and he took a moment to rest with his hands on his knees. 

“Luke — was that his name? — was a stroke of genius. He seems the type that rabbits pretty far down into his safe den. Where did you find him?”

“Around,” Cory said. Lathe took a step forward, and Cory knew Lathe could draw that story from him if he had to. He lifted his hand, giving up, but asking for a second to find his ability to breathe first.

Lathe touched his forehead, allowing it. He put his head down, gathering up his thoughts. “He hadn’t completely rabbited,” he said, when he could. “He had his small group of feeders downtown. I just looked for the throat marks. When I found them, I staked them out until he found me. Then it was a simple matter of getting myself chosen.”

“Ingenious,” Lathe allowed. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

“Thanks,” Cory said, bitterly. “The best marks are the marks who think they can’t be taken. Luke didn’t think he could be. We were together almost a year before he even told me what he was, and then it took another year for him to turn me.”

“I suppose it was your bad luck. I could think of a dozen different vampires who would have been thrilled to turn a grade A piece of ass like yourself.”

“I know,” Cory said, his lips twisting back in a hard smile. You arrogant fuck, he thought, then quashed the thoughts before they fully formed. It had taken Luke that long to show him there were more kinds of relationships out there than tricks and marks, and like the dumbest of all rubes, Cory himself had fallen for it. He’d been happy with Luke, even hidden away from the rest of the world. He saw that now. He’d been at a pub with Luke downtown the night they’d stepped out onto the street and he smelled the fire. 

And he’d known Lathe was back. Waiting for the first cold, so that Brutus could form, but he was in the city, and looking for him. He remembered how helpless he’d felt, how he’d almost collapsed against the hood of the car over how stupid it was, or how much he’d wanted to believe that his pretend life with Luke was the real reason he was there. But of course he couldn’t. And didn’t. They’d had their first fight that night, over something he knew Luke would be completely defensive about, and that was the beginning of the end. 

It had all been so perfectly planned on his part until he saw Luke by the water. 

Lathe smiled, lifting his chin. “And now, tell me, my little bird. Did you think that just being turned would save you? Give you an edge over me that you thought you needed?”

Cory didn’t answer that. Lathe wasn’t quite finished. “Did you know being turned would make you predisposed to obey a stronger vampire? That it would be in your blood now?”

I counted on it. Cory dug his nails into his burn. It didn’t hurt as much as pushing it against the window, but it still cut through the fog forming in his brain. He’d seen Lathe break down humans by going into their brains and scooping out everything individual, like carving a pumpkin into a jack o’ lantern. They’d been grinning corpses for Lathe to play with, and Cory couldn’t let that happen to him. He looked down. 

“Don’t. Look at me.” Cory had to, as much as Lathe’s smile sickened him. “Kneel.”

Despite himself, Cory sank to his knees. He placed the palms of his hands against his inner thighs, and the memory of Luke marking them brought him even more to himself. He did belong to a stronger vampire, but it wasn’t Lathe. He looked up, as coyly as he could. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now, we wait,” Lathe said. “Good night, my little bird. Don’t let the bad dreams disturb you, too much.”

Cory wanted to jump to his feet, but there was no way he could, not until Lathe allowed it. “The window’s wide open!” he called.

“Then you’d better find something to block it with, shouldn’t you?” Lathe called back, and with that, he released Cory. The door slammed shut, cutting him off from the landing, and although he didn’t hear the lock turn, Cory knew that it wouldn’t budge. Still, he tried it, and there wasn’t even a quarter inch of give to it. It could have been a part of the wall with a doorknob sticking out of it for no apparent reason.

It took him the rest of the night to move the bookcase in front of the window, and even then he had to cram the smaller of the books on it between the bookcase and the wall. When morning came, he expected the escaping rays to cut into him like a paper shredder. The bookcase itself had a corona like an eclipse, but the room itself stayed in perpetual twilight.

*

Chapter Five

*

The garage door was open, but Luke remained behind the wheel in the driveway for much longer than he should have. The rays of the sun were coming; he felt them tighten the skin on his face, but he couldn’t quite make himself take his foot off the brake and coast the rest of the way in. 

But his foot did come off the brake, and he did apply the gas, and he closed the garage door behind him. He snapped off the engine, the first thing he remembered actually doing, and let himself into the side door just off the kitchen.

Mrs. Reinhart perched on one of the stools around the island. The steam from her tea brought with it the actual smell of chamomile. She was translucent, like she always was, but there was a hard edge to her he’d never seen before. The room was cold, despite how hard the furnace had kicked in. He watched her for a second, but for once she didn’t just nod and look away. 

The voice was in his head. Her face was expectant. There were so many ghosts in the house, including his last fight with Cory. It seemed like ages since last night and their fight.

But Cory had told him to remember what he’d said that evening. They hadn’t argued that evening, they’d only…

They’d only fucked. And Cory had told him that he was his.

It was too late to go back. It was too late to do anything but go downstairs and wait for the sun to pass.

*

Cory didn’t go to sleep, not at first. The room was cold and he wasn’t convinced that the bookcase would hold. And when he did close his eyes, he felt whatever it was that formed blue and purple lights from in front of the bookcase reach for him. He was predisposed to let it in. Lathe might not have scooped out the pumpkin seeds inside his head, but he had done something, and closing his eyes let the light through him to fill him up. 

The light was nothing like Lathe’s pressings. There was no escaping these, no hiding what happened, and what was going to happen. He hadn’t been stupid, even if he was from a small town. They had the Internet and satellite television. When Lathe asked him to come, Cory had gone.

Lathe lived in one of the old houses in the outskirts of town. It had been an old farm house, before the town’s identical houses on similarly named streets reached out to it. He shouldn’t have gone; to say that Lathe stared at him hungrily was not even half of it. 

Lathe had found him outside of the seven or eight stores that were a mall in name only. He found out later that his social worker had sold him out, giving up his name as someone who wouldn’t be missed and was disposable. He couldn’t really blame her, though; he didn’t think for a second that she gave up the information willingly. Lathe had that ability to pull anything from anyone.

And Cory knew he hadn’t made Lathe work very hard. The lights of the vortex dug through the cloth he’d thrown over the memories in his brain. He didn’t want to think about them. He hadn’t thought about it, not since the burn on his hand had driven the thoughts away. He’d purged it from his head when he’d pressed the iron into his flesh. He dug his nails into the scar, wanting the sweet pain to fill him and take away all the dirty-bad-wrong, but the light tossed his feeble attempts to keep himself from remembering. It wanted to know. Cory felt its curiosity. 

“Please,” he told it. “I don’t want to remember.”

The light tickled him, lightly. It wasn’t trying to hurt him, and even as Cory tried to crawl away from the pain, the light wicked it away. He could watch the memories the vortex pulled from him without feeling the shame of what he’d done. He stopped fighting, and let the vortex take.

The old house had a door that squeaked. Cory had raced to the broken screen door half a dozen times, mostly during Halloween pranks when he was too old to trick or treat but too young to stay inside. When he was older, and his aunt couldn’t control him any more (not that she controlled him any less), he’d gone with Lathe because…because…

Because he’d always thought he was meant for more. And Lathe promised him something older, something more than just another small town rat. Just another brat that had his eighteenth birthday marked on the local RCMP detachment’s wall. It wasn’t important that he really hadn’t done most of the things they thought or caught him doing. Not important that the first time he’d been on his bike at the wrong time and in the wrong neighborhood. He knew Luke thought that he’d learned how to con with his father, and he’d embraced it as a lifestyle, but he hadn’t. Even as a kid he saw past the smiles of his father’s marks to their realization of how much they’d been taken.

But, when another of the town’s pack of young men, Jack of the grin and the soft blond hair had asked Cory to keep watch, Cory couldn’t say no. He couldn’t say anything much at all, actually. With the knot in his throat he could only go along with whatever Jack asked. He’d been weak, as weak as a mark, and he’d gone in willingly. When Jack got caught, Cory took the blame, and after his first weekend stay at juvie, Jack had skipped town. By then, of course, Cory’s name was muddied, and in small towns, sometimes that’s all it takes.

So he accepted it. And when Lathe started hunting him, he let himself be snatched up. It was stupid. If he could have taken it back he would have, but that was where he was. Lathe had kissed him, drinking from him, and it was better than every single shy fumble in the locker room. 

And then, of course, because every mark realizes they’ve been taken, sooner or later, Cory had woken up, sticky in the pants and locked in an upstairs closet. And, he wasn’t alone.

The thing in the closet wasn’t anything like the vortex. It was weaker, less focused, and it definitely didn’t…feel, if that was the right word for it. He felt the vortex touching him again, soothing him, removing all the sting of his stupidity. 

The presence in the closet had been angrier. It wanted inside of Cory, and whatever Lathe had done to him made it impossible for him not to let it. He’d fallen back, and found the iron with its frayed cord at knee level. There was an old socket — it hadn’t always been a closet — someone had died in the back room, and they hadn’t been entirely thrilled over it. Cory felt the rage, felt how whoever it was — it had been a woman — had clawed at the door with her nails until they were bloody. And she was furious. They were furious. They would —

Cory got the electrical plug into the wall socket. It was old, and took a long time to heat up. The woman in his head didn’t speak to him in words, but in images. She’d been a maid in the farm house, and she’d fallen in love with the husband. He hadn’t reciprocated; she was convinced he had. The wife locked her up after she’d tried to kill them. 

And she’d died. 

Cory fought to stay awake. It would be so easy to close his eyes, let her take over, and if Lathe was coming to kill him to free the power she’d consumed, well, that was all right, too. 

The smell of electrical burning was heavy in the air. He picked up the iron, casually, like he would a book or a can of Coke, and pressed it against the palm of his hand. The woman, Beth was her name, screamed with his voice, and fled his body like it was a burning building.

She’d withdrawn to the rafters, and wasn’t coming out. Lathe wasn’t awake; it was midday, and without the being in the closet with him, there was just a lock keeping him in. He kicked at it, suddenly afraid that the noise would wake Lathe, but the house was silent. 

He kicked it again, but nothing happened. He remembered how much his hand hurt. He blacked out, twice, when the pain was too much, but the closet door was old, and he’d burst through it. Then it was down the hall, down the stairs, out the door and into brilliant sunlight. Every step closer to the door, the sensation of Lathe’s hand coming down on him, his teeth and nails sharp and cutting, to match the agony in his hand.

His aunt had been convinced that the damage to Cory’s hand was some sort of gang initiation. She took him to the hospital, for the first time gentle and caring, but when he hadn’t named names, but that hadn’t lasted. Cory had felt raw inside, said some things he shouldn’t have, snatched the bus ticket from her hand and slammed doors behind him in his wake. When he woke up on the bus, just outside of Kamloops, for the first few seconds he tried to figure out how it had all been a bad dream. But it hadn’t. And he knew deep down inside that Lathe would come looking for him. He was going to be ready.

Lathe had found him once, when Brutus had pinned him down. The headlights of an oncoming semi had sent him to smoke. The plan was simple. He’d find another like Lathe and level the playing field. And Luke had seemed the perfect candidate. He didn’t carry a torch for his old master; he’d set fields ablaze and hold the fire to his chest willingly. There’d seemed like no chance he’d actually grow attached, and for the first few months, Cory had been absolutely right. He kept himself at his prickly best, and Luke would look at him and not entirely see him. 

But it hadn’t lasted, either. Luke started to see him. He stopped pushing away. 

Then he felt Lathe, and Brutus remembered him. He had to leave. So he did, and he didn’t want Luke to follow. It had been a bitter, snarling breakup, but Luke had believed it. He was so tired. The mention of Luke interested the vortex. It dug deeper into those thoughts. “No,” he told it. “Please. I don’t want to remember.”

Another touch, still as calming as before. It could take away the agony of his hand, but couldn’t touch the anguish of what he’d said, what he’d done. “It’s not fair.”

The memories shifted in his head, away from how bad it is, to how good it was. They’d hunted together, and oh, how’d they fucked. He’d never imagined it could be that equal, no take, no give, just willing mouths and fingers and cocks…

These memories he could live with. He touched his lips with his bad hand, and remembered how it felt to kiss Luke. And then in that second Luke was there. Not really; he was still in an empty room and Cory knew he was flat on his back on the cold, wooden floor, but he felt Luke with him. Cory parted his lips, letting Luke inside. He tasted of blood and of wine, and despite the chill in the air, of the long August nights when it had been so hot that even in the basement it was enough just to feel Luke spoon up behind him, put his hands on Cory’s hip, sliding inside him with such slow, painstaking gentleness it reduced Cory’s entire world to fucking in general and just being fucked in specific. 

And Luke spoke to him, always. Telling him when he would kiss him, and where. Whether it would be a light touch of the lips, barely grazing Cory’s skin or if there would be teeth involved. And then if there was, and there almost always was, Luke let him guess whether or not it was going to be hard enough to draw Cory’s blood or a bare scrape of human teeth against his artery.

‘I’m going to come,’ became, “Please, Luke, let me come,” and Luke, smiling though there was no way Cory could see it, would kiss the back of his neck or run his tongue on the soft spot behind Cory’s ear. 

You can hold out a bit longer he would say, and did say, in Cory’s head. And Cory would insist that he couldn’t, but oh, fuck, he could and the stings and promises would continue until Cory couldn’t even think straight and his entire body would feel the orgasm slide out of him, lasting forever and all but lifting him off the bed or couch or floor he was on.

“I love you,” Cory would say, in that brief second, when everything in his entire world was right, including the words that escaped him and Luke would kiss his shoulder and pretend he didn’t hear.

The smell of his semen filled the dusty, dry room. The vortex slid the rest of the way inside him, and if Lathe had any idea how much stronger this one was compared to the girl in the closet, he wouldn’t have gotten involved.

“But he’s involved now,” Cory said to the empty room. He held out his hand, willing himself to do it. He had to remember how to move his muscle groups again, and then realized with a shock that it wasn’t his command that had moved his arm. He looked up to the window, but the corona was gone; it was nightfall, or close enough to it that the world was coming back alive. He heard Brutus starting to pace, still mostly formless so that it was just the sound of smoke drifting across the wooden floors, but he heard it. He heard Lathe wake from his slumber, felt him stand over the corpse he’d fed on, and take the stairs two at a time.

Cory pushed to his feet. Moving the bookcase took no more effort than drawing in a breath to speak, and even though the window had been painted shut for years, he had no problem pulling the window open, either.

He was sitting on the ledge as Lathe appeared, the vicious knife in his hand sharp enough to shave with. In his other hand was a wooden stake, round and sharp. “You’ve come to kill me,” he said, voice only slightly mocking.

Lathe nodded. “That is the plan.”

Cory stood up, feeling the rush of power in his body. He was still himself, barely, and soon he’d be swallowed up completely by the other, but for right now, he could enjoy this.

“Do you really think I would let that happen?” he asked. He let a hint of the power that had collected here, where the two rivers joined over millennia fill him, and Lathe stepped back. Cory smiled again. “You have freed me, and for that, I will not kill you tonight.”

“I have mastery over you!” Lathe snarled.

Cory walked to Lathe. Lathe’s hands were suddenly too heavy for him to be able to lift either weapon, and they both clattered to the floor. “But I will kill you,” he whispered, and kissed Lathe on the cheek, once. “This body is magnificent,” he said, and that line was wholly the other. “I really must thank you.”

“Come back,” Lathe said, but oh so weakly. “Please.”

Cory felt himself change. Not to the raven, he couldn’t, not nude as he was, but to a snowy owl, beautiful as he was deadly. He took to the sky, wings barely making it through the window, and he was off and up. Away. 

And no longer himself at all. 

*

Chapter Six

*

Luke had just made the coffee when he heard something strike the window. It didn’t have the weight of a bird breaking its neck, but he heard the nail-on-a-chalkboard sound of talons striking the glass. “Cory?” he called, going to the door, but flicked on the floodlights before opening the door.

It wasn’t Cory. At least, it wasn’t a raven. The snowy owl in the tree cocked his head to the side, its round yellow eyes frankly observing, and then it was Cory himself, naked, sprawled over the branch. He threw his leg over the branch and slid down. He landed, lightly, on the grass and padded towards Luke.

“How did you—” Luke began. It was still cold out, the snap had lengthened into a spell, but even though Cory looked paler than usual from lack of blood, he seemed unaffected by it. “Cory, you must be freezing.”

“Fuck me,” Cory said.

“We’re back to this?” Luke asked, and rubbed his face. Just when he thought he broke through with Cory, it was like he was always trying to push. “Look, I’m thrilled you’re back, but I don’t—”

Cory kissed him, taking Luke’s head in his hands. “Fuck me, Luke. Please. Here on the grass if you want. Would you prefer me on my knees?”

Luke wished he could say no. He took Cory by the shoulder and pulled him inside. “You said you loved me,” Luke said. “That you were mine.”

“I did,” Cory said, voice joyous. “Do you want to fuck on the couch or go downstairs?”

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Later. I need you. Now, please.”

There was something wrong, and Luke knew it, but he wasn’t a saint, either. He took Cory to the couch. It was obvious that Cory couldn’t wait. Already naked and hard, he squirmed away when Luke tried to kiss him. “Suck my cock,” he said, trying to push Luke’s head down. “Go on. Suck it. I want to feel your lips on my skin.”

Something was definitely wrong. He took hold of Cory’s wrists, and was actually quite shocked at how easily Cory broke his hold. “What—” Luke began, but Cory wouldn’t let him speak. They kissed again, more for Cory to shut him up than out of affection or love, and Luke broke away. “What are you?”

“What do you mean, what am I? I’m your Cory. You need to fuck me.”

“You’re not my Cory,” Luke said, sure of that as he was about his distrust of sunlight. “I don’t know what you are, but you are not my Cory.”

Cory’s face changed, instantly. Gone were the smiles, and he was as still as though he’d been suddenly chiseled out of stone. “He is in here.”

“Unless he’s in the driver’s seat we’re not taking the car out of the driveway,” Luke said. He broke free, having to get away because his body truly wasn’t minding the lack of Cory inside Cory’s body. “What are you?”

Cory, or Cory’s body at least, leaned back, sprawling the exact way Cory had a thousand times before. “These must be principles,” he said. “I cannot say that I like them at all. You liked it when Cory begged for you. Would that change anything?” He ran his hand down his belly and touched his erection. “I could beg on my knees, if you think it will help.”

“Let me speak with Cory,” Luke said.

“I told you. He’s in here. He’s just a little busy.” Cory stood up, going to Luke, but Luke held him away at arm’s length and Cory, for once, respected that. “I could just take you.”

Luke held out his hands. “That is not going to happen,” he said. “I believe you don’t mean Cory any harm, just let me speak with him.”

Cory stood up as well, practically stalking Luke across the living room. “What I want, I take. Isn’t that how you humans are? Do you think you can stop me?”

Luke closed his eyes. Cory was so close, and smelled so familiar Luke could barely push him away, but push him away he did. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t form the words the first time.

“What did you say?” Cory demanded.

“I said, I revoke my invitation,” Luke said, slowly, forming each word carefully. Cory screeched in pain, Luke bolted for the door, swinging it open, and Cory turned back into the bird if only because it was faster. Wings beat against Luke’s face, talons dug into his cheek, and then the white owl was away. He watched as Cory flew up into the night, but he didn’t call him back. He couldn’t; it would have invited whatever that thing was back into his house again, and the thought of being alone with it, late during the day when he was completely defenseless, was more frightening than it should have been.

“I’m sorry,” he told the night sky, when the bird was completely out of sight. But it was Brutus who answered, miles away but crystal clear on the cold, chilly wind.

* 

Lathe let Brutus out at true dark. The wolf bolted past him, into the garden and behind the house, where the forested edge of the river met the parking lot. Lathe let him run, and opened himself up to Brutus’s feeling of freedom. He felt caged in, himself; the vortex was gone, the restaurant was empty but for the ghosts, and he needed time to think about how he was going to trap it again. 

The world was too bright for him to concentrate, so he went down back down to the basement. The corpse was dried out, but he kicked it nonetheless before settling down into his nest. He could still feel Brutus running through the trees, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, and that, at least, was calming. Soon he would find something to kill and they would both feed for the night.

He’d created Brutus out of ice and need and hunger and just a little bit of himself. They were linked. He opened himself a little more, letting him be the wolf and enjoy the hunt. He’d found something, something wholly alive and full of blood. He bounded further down the trail, silent as death, and his body responded to its panicked biorhythms with absolute hunger.

When death came though, it didn’t come from teeth and claws but talons and beak. The owl descended silently from the sky, digging its claws into the back of Brutus’s neck. Its beak came down; Lathe felt the sharp pain as though it were happening to the back of his own neck, and the owl severed Brutus’s spinal column. It wasn’t a line of nerves but the core of what tied Brutus together. When it was severed, Brutus collapsed. 

Lathe sat up, completely alone in the basement. Alone for just a second, of course, as the flurry of wings stirred the air around him. The owl struck his face, the power of its wings beyond what any owl should have had. And then it was just Cory, naked and sitting cross-legged at the end of his nest. “You didn’t have to kill it,” Lathe said.

Cory wiped off his mouth. There was no blood; Brutus didn’t have any in him. But, it wasn’t done entirely for the dramatic gesture. There was something on his lips, even if it wasn’t blood, and it smelled of Brutus. Lathe could only watch as Cory licked his fingers clean. “Sweet,” he decided. “That’s what I’m going to call it.”

“You belong to me,” Lathe said, voice harsh. “I demand that you—”

Cory backhanded him, with his free hand; he wasn’t quite finished taking in Brutus’ essence with the other. Lathe fell back, head striking one of the numerous support poles holding up the main floor, and he had to shake his head to clear the ringing from it. “Would you like to rephrase that? I believe I’m going to call this feeling I have here as taking offense to your tone.”

“I freed you,” Lathe said, changing tactics though it stuck in his throat to do so. This Cory was stronger than anything he’d ever felt before. The power radiated from his skin in the same sickening blue light, and his eyes shone with it. He had an erection, and occasionally his hand would drop down and stroke it a couple times, but his eyes never left Lathe. Lathe stopped talking before he accidently added a you owe me part to the sentence.

“You did,” Cory said. He sat up so that he was kneeling in the nest, but there was no submission in the position. He just couldn’t be arsed to stand yet. Lathe swallowed, and the first sliver of fear slid down his spine. “But I came here because I wanted something from you.”

Lathe didn’t ask what. If Cory didn’t have the energy or the strength to kill him where he stood, Lathe would have found the look of strain on Cory’s face to be almost comical. But there was absolutely nothing funny about it now. “Oh, yes. I remember. I believe this body is hungry.”

“I’ll fetch you something,” Lathe said, and moved to stand.

“No,” Cory said, simply. “It wants to feed from you.”

“But I’m —” Lathe began, and then silenced. He was still full from the man Brutus had herded toward him. There was so much blood in a human if you took it all at once; it was a much more efficient use of his time rather than the sippy cup method that most of the modern vampires had taken. He was bursting with blood, he felt that now and it would be amazingly stupid if he did anything rash. “I’m here for you.”

“Of course you are,” Cory said, lips twisting. “Your kind always is. Manipulate my penis while I drink.”

“It’s called jerking off,” Lathe said.

“I don’t care what it’s called. I just want it done right.” Cory moved to him, pulling him to his feet and dragged him, ankles on the ground back to the wall. “This body remembers where to bite,” he continued. “It’s like your skin sings to be punctured. Put your hand on my penis.”

It had been centuries since Lathe had been submissive to another vampire. He told himself believe he didn’t recall how it was done, but up against the wall his body remembered. Submissive was not what or who he was, but under someone much stronger his body couldn’t help but respond as submissive. He licked his palm, which obviously confused Cory slightly, and then he wrapped his fingers around Cory’s cock.

“Much better,” Cory announced. He tried an experimental thrust, but obviously didn’t care for it. “You do it.”

Lathe did. Cory’s cock was leaking enough pre-cum that he was able to gather it up and use it. Even with it, though, it was drier than Lathe personally liked it. But it wasn’t his call. He kept his hand loose, despite enjoying the way Cory’s cock felt in his hand. When Cory bit him, teeth deep into his neck, that at least was familiar. 

“Do it,” Lathe whispered. There was something primal in the blood taking and giving, something better than the taste of blood. Lathe closed his eyes, letting Cory just take him. His other hand moved up, taking Cory in both hands, and together they rode it out. Cory drank more and more, pulling enough to narrow Lathe’s vision to black bands.

“Consider it done,” Cory said, breaking free. “You’re nowhere near as good as he was.”

Lathe collapsed to his knees, no longer able to stand, and Cory left him like that. Cory tripped up the stairs, two at a time, and it was all Lathe could do to crawl on his hands and knees up and out. He found an old man sleeping it off in the valley. The drunk tasted like the sewer. Lathe didn’t let the human wake up again.

* 

Luke remembered sitting down on the couch, but after that was a blur. Someone knocked at the door, and when Luke ignored it, the noise became a pounding.

“Bloody hell,” Luke snarled, getting to his feet. He almost tore the heavy wooden door off its hinges. 

It wasn't Cory. Luke didn't expect it to be, and yet still he was disappointed. Lathe stood in front of the glass storm door. Out of habit Luke flicked on the porch light, but Lathe was alone and...Luke studied his face. Deflated, Luke supposed, if he had to put a name to it.

For a moment, they just stared at each other. “Where’s the pooch?” Luke asked, finally.

“Dead,” Lathe said. “As dead as anything could be, made of what Brutus was made of.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Luke said.

Lathe shook his head. “Not me.”

“That thing inside Cory did it,” Luke finished.

A nod. Luke was a little frightened to see actual pain from Lathe. “May I come in?” Lathe asked, after a long pause.

“Not a chance,” Luke said easily.

“Then come out and join me.”

“Not a chance of that, either, I’m afraid.”

Lathe exhaled sharply. He obviously wasn’t accustomed to being denied. Luke took pleasure in it. “Cory took care of himself, didn’t he? Your brilliant plan was ruined, and now you’re stuck with the consequences.”

“But not alone. That thing out there, it fed from me tonight to gather its strength, but it’s only a matter of time before it gets hungry again. What do you think is going to happen to this city once people start dropping?”

“Spare me your false concern. I’m sure your heart bleeds as passively as it can for the potential loss of human life.”

“If not for the loss of life than at least for the loss of incognito. Our kind are not the sort to embrace a paranoid night population.”

Luke’s lip curled at the thought. They were long past the angry villagers and pitchfork stage, but angry mobs of whatever sort always armed themselves. 

Not that he was entirely convinced, and Lathe saw it, too. “You have my word. With your assistance I may not have to kill him to get that thing out of him.”

“Bullshit,” Luke snarled. “If you could have killed him, you wouldn’t have offered him a snack while you jerked him off.”

Lathe had the good grace to look embarrassed. “You could smell that?” he asked, touching the barely closed marks at his throat.

Luke only nodded.

“I need your help. You need your little bird back, and when we get it out of him, I promise you our paths won’t cross again.”

That, if for no other reason, was enough for Luke. He rubbed his neck. “What are you suggesting?”

“Join me.”

“Help,” Luke corrected. “The word you are looking for is help.”

“Help. Help me get that thing out of your boy. I will pull out my power from him, you’ll get the shell back. It’s win-win situation for us both.”

“And then?” 

“Like I said. You’ll never see me again.”

Luke nodded, suddenly exhausted though a good two to three hours remained of the night. “Tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“It’s going to have to be,” Luke said, and began to close the door. Lathe reached for the storm door, about to push it open, but his hand was brought up short just inside the interior door frame. He slammed his fists against it, but it still barred him. “Not the way to win friends,” Luke said. He’d seen dogs up north, all but wild, taking food from their ‘masters.’ They’d had the same look that Lathe did at that moment. He’d be safe for as long as Lathe needed something from him, but he didn’t have to be told the promise of safety afterward was useless. “Tomorrow,” he said.

Lathe grinned at him, hunger and fury so close to the surface that if Luke scratched him they would escape before the blood would. He bowed his head, once, and then backed away. He got into his car and Luke watched him go until the tail lights were no longer visible.

He closed down the upstairs and went back to his storeroom for the night. He slept through sunrise, and was well into the morning when he heard something in the main room. He opened his eyes, moving before he was fully awake. It was only Cory, sitting in the overstuffed chair by his computer. He looked tired, with dark circles below his eyes, and he was dressed in all black, including his gloves. 

It was the gloves that tipped him off that Cory wasn’t entirely with him. Whatever was inside Cory wouldn’t have bothered with the gloves. It couldn’t have been the vortex; the lack of invitation would have stopped it. Cory himself, however, would always be more than welcome. “Can you speak?” Luke asked.

“I’m not dead,” Cory said.

Luke felt less relief than the words should have given him. “Then how are you here?”

“I don’t know. It lets me sleep, and when I sleep, I come here.”

Luke came around him. His fingers felt real in Luke’s, even though he was just touching the glove. “But I can touch you.”

“You’re asleep,” Cory told him. 

“I am?” Luke asked.

Cory stood. “You are.”

“You love me,” Luke said. “I think you’ve always loved me.”

“I’ve always loved you,” Cory said. 

“And that was what you were hiding from me, all this time.”

“I knew Lathe would find me. I didn’t think he’d take that long, but he did. And when he found me…I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk you.”

“You should have told me. I could have —”

“What? Protected me? You had no idea how strong he was. Is. How strong he still is. If he hadn’t tapped the vortex, thinking he could have controlled it, I’d be dead by now. And you? You’d still be alive.”

“Do we have to fight over this? Wouldn’t you rather…” Cory didn’t answer. He dropped his voice, and his gaze. “We don’t have to. Not anymore.”

“I suppose not,” Luke said. “I want to kiss you.”

“I want you to kiss me.”

“And I don’t want to argue anymore.”

Cory looked up again. He smiled. “Me neither. Except…maybe…”

Luke sighed. “What?”

“Maybe we could do more than just kiss.”

Luke took his hands, pulling him up. If this was a dream, things felt real enough. “And isn’t that enough?” Cory asked.

“For now,” Luke said.

Cory smiled. Luke dropped to his knees and took Cory’s hand. “What are you —” Cory began, then shut his mouth. Luke began to tug the glove off with his teeth, but Cory began to pull his hand back. “Don’t.”

“Gotcha,” Luke said. He parted Cory’s fingers by rubbing the palm of his hand, and took the middle finger, glove and all, down his throat. Cory put two fingers together, sliding them into Luke’s mouth, and Luke held his wrist still, being very careful about his teeth.

“Luke,” Cory whispered, his voice breaking over the single syllable. “I can’t…I mean…”

“You’re not going to say it?” Luke smiled, pulling his head back. 

“I’d rather you suck on my cock. Please. I’ll take it out and everything.”

“Will you, now?” Luke asked, and leaned back on his heels. “Why don’t you go ahead and do that, then?”

Cory bowed his head for a second in thanks and undid his jeans. He pulled them down to his thighs. “Tell me what to do.”

Luke looked up. He’d be just as happy fucking, but there was a needy look to Cory’s face. “Do you really want it that way?”

“Yes, please.”

“Then…put your hands behind your neck. You can lock your fingers together, if you think it would be easier.”

Cory chewed on his bottom lip. He hesitated, but then latched his fingers behind him. “Better?” Luke asked.

“Much.”

“Good. Stay that way.”

Cory nodded. Luke ran his fingers down Cory’s hips. His hard cock was tight against his belly. He kissed his hip bone. Cory couldn’t stop his hips from trying to thrust, so Luke held him still before he took him into his mouth.

“Yes,” Cory hissed.

Luke thought, briefly, of letting go and just letting Cory fuck the back of his throat, but that wasn’t what Cory wanted. Instead, he forced Cory’s legs even farther apart, his jeans pulled tight around his thighs about the best method of containment, and Cory relaxed completely. No pain; Cory didn’t need that. He shivered. Luke had to sit up to get all of Cory’s cock down his throat. 

And then, in dream logic that made perfect sense at the time, Cory was in his bed. His wrists were manacled together, the blindfold firmly in place, and his hips were over a pile of pillows that put him at the perfect angle. Luke was admiring the arrangement in one second, and then inside Cory the next and they found a rhythm that worked, though there was still a glassed-in feeling, like at least a part of Luke was just watching the sex and not completely a part of it.

Cory flexed his hands. “It’s enough,” he said. “Please. Let it be enough.”

But it wasn’t. The aware part began buzzing in his head like a wasp. He grabbed onto Cory’s hip, willing himself to stay, but he couldn’t. His body was waking, and the dream broke around him. He was alone, in his bed, hot and hard, and Cory’s blindfold was beside him.

He lay back, panting, though he really didn’t need to. It was dark out again; the dream had taken all day. It was time. He got up, considered whacking off, but decided he’d rather keep the energy. 

He dressed, stiffly, and drove to the restaurant. Lathe waited for him, arms crossed over his chest. Luke reluctantly shut off his lights and got out of the car, expecting to feel Brutus’ ice cold teeth sinking into his ankle. It never came. Brutus was really gone. 

Lathe looked more himself. He’d since fed after Cory. His color was back, but his core strength, the ability he had to push his thoughts into Luke, was muzzled. As Luke walked up he felt Lathe trying, but the attempts were leaden and easily avoidable. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Lathe said. 

“How do we find him?” Luke asked.

“Feel.”

“Feel what?” Luke snapped, not liking being toyed with.

“Just feel, Luke. You have to trust me.”

Luke snorted, but bowed his head for a second. Then he felt it. Cory, or whatever it was inside Cory, was pulling energy from the rivers and the people. It was a yellow light, shining across the bridge from the downtown area. “So that’s one concern. What do we do when we find him?”

“Hold him down, drive the vortex from him.”

Lathe kicked the door behind him open. The chains coiled up on the inside were wrong; even where he stood he could feel the burning from them. “What are they?”

“Iron,” Lathe said.

“That’s not just iron.” It wasn’t. Luke could feel the pain in it. He didn’t want it anywhere near him. “What is it?”

“It’s melted down iron. Iron from a dozen different abandoned places of worship. Temples, churches, mosques. It took me years to gather them.” Lathe smiled. It was an ugly thing. “They’ll keep anything chained down.”

“How do we get it down to begin with?” Luke asked.

“Well, that’s up to you.”

“Me?”

“It has a hard-on for you, Luke, my boy. And let’s just hope it has enough of your little bird’s proclivities for it to submit to you. “

“And then?” Luke asked.

Lathe took out a hypodermic needle, wicked sharp and murky.

“What is that?”

“A tranquilizer. Enough to knock out a horse. When the little bird is on his knees, stick him and he’ll wake up in chains. After that, you leave it to me.”

“You’re barking mad, aren’t you?” Luke asked. Lathe ignored him completely. 

“Your gloves are inside. Help me carry it to your car.”

Luke stepped over the chains just inside the door. The old man on the staircase stared at him hollowly. He was fraying along the edges, dispersing right in front of Luke. The woman crying in the bathroom was reduced to sobs, softly, and there was nothing from the attic. Their power source had been taken; they were losing their grip. “I’m sorry,” he told them, then slipped on the common pair of gardening gloves. Even through the suede, he felt the chains burn. The dead were angry, even with their loss, and Luke was glad he hadn’t spent more than just a couple moments in the house.

“I’ll drive,” Luke said, once the chain was in the trunk of the car. Lathe held his hands up. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Luke nodded. He found Cory’s gloves by the driver’s door. He scooped them up, got in and waited for Lathe to get in behind him before slamming his door shut and driving away. This close, and in the enclosed space, Luke could smell the insanity that tinged Lathe’s skin. “Why are you doing this?” Luke asked, staring at the road.

“Doing what?”

“Trying to channel something that shouldn’t be channeled. What did you hope at best would happen?”

“You have no idea what that thing is, do you?” Lathe asked. Even at the dead of night, there was still traffic, and Luke pulled up to a red light. “You think there’s nothing to this life but eating and fornicating.”

“There’s more?” Luke asked.

“Oh, for all that is unholy, you poor, pathetic fool. You’ve never tasted real power, have you?” he put his hand out, touching Luke’s knee. Luke pushed it off like it stung him. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your ghosts, you don’t think that’s unusual? What about your Cory’s feathered act? You have your talents, and the lines of power, what little there is here in Calgary, fuel them. It’s the reason there is no one else here other than you. No one else could use what little power had escaped the vortex, and the fact that you’d made such a powerful vampire is quite remarkable.”

“Leave us alone. We were good here.”

“You were sitting on a geyser of power, stopped up by a single entity. It is our right to use that power, not that thing’s. You’ve never known the power, but you will.”

“We’re getting Cory back,” Luke said. “And you’re getting the hell out of Dodge. That’s about as far as I want to plan with you right now.”

“You’re a fool,” Lathe snarled.

Luke hit the gas a little harder than he meant to.

They found Cory on the top of the Centennial Parking Garage. He was naked, as usual, and sprawled eagle on one of the cars abandoned overnight. He was hungry, without even knowing it, probably, but having that thing in him was taking more strength than it thought. The thing sat up when they reached the row it was in, and slid off the car onto Cory’s feet. There was nothing more of Cory inside him, Luke saw, even from where he was sitting behind the wheel. If Cory wasn’t asleep, he was far, far down.

The garage was newish, less than a couple years old, but it was still old enough to have caused its own share of deaths. A homeless man, found frozen where he slept on the coldest night of the year, a hit and run victim who’d died before paramedics arrived. There was even a businessman, who had been found clutching his chest behind the wheel of something black and sleek. They’d gathered around Cory, leaning into the power that he was, but Cory didn’t seem to notice them. 

Luke didn’t get out of the car. He didn’t have to to know that it was all a very bad idea. Cory stared at him through the glass, and Luke knew Cory knew exactly what they were planning.

“This is not going to work,” he told Lathe.

“Have some faith,” Lathe said, using the word as though it only had four letters. 

“He knows why we’re here.”

“Of course he does. But he doesn’t know what you have in your pocket. You don’t know how far a sexual obsession can go.”

“He can do a bit more to us than just boil a rabbit,” Luke said, but Lathe looked at him hard, so he get out of the car, too tired argue anymore. Cory hadn’t moved from where he leaned against the fender of his car. 

“I revoke my invitation,” it said, in Cory’s flat voice. His arms were crossed, his face cold, but still his entire body leaned toward Luke out of need.

“I think that only works in private dwellings,” Luke told him.

“Really?” Cory asked. “You sure?”

“Fairly,” Luke said. “Sorry.”

“So many rules to this body. How did you learn them all?”

“One at a time.” Luke was close now; he hadn’t been aware of the fact he’d kept moving. He remembered planting his feet a good four or five yards from Cory. Now he was close enough to feel Cory’s breath on his neck, if either of them breathed. It helped that he no longer smelled of Cory, but of something completely other.

“I suppose I’ll learn them as well. There are others coming like you. Soon this place will be swarming with them. And you and I will feed.”

“But you’re hungry now,” Luke said, calmly.

“Starved,” Cory agreed. “I can feel your blood moving and I want it. Also, I want to put you over this hood and fuck you, or at least this body does. Is that normal?”

“For that body it is.” Luke couldn’t kill the grin on his face. He wanted it as much as Cory did, and it took a lot of strength to pull back from the need. More strength than he had, and he was on borrowed time as it was, but he needed to understand. 

“The others that are coming here. Did you know they’re all stronger than the one thinking about the chain in the trunk right now? Are those for me?”

Luke looked over his shoulder. “Supposedly,” he said, though he had no real way of confirming what Lathe was thinking.

“Does he think I’m just going to fall for that hypodermic needle in your pocket? That I’d just let you, what did he say, ‘stick’ me? Does he really think I’m that stupid?”

“I believe he believes you’d be overcome with lust.”

“Overcome with lust?” Cory repeated. “Over you?”

There was no lying to Cory, not when that thing was inside him. He pulled the truth from Luke like a handkerchief from a pocket. “I told him it wouldn’t work,” Luke said.

“Tell him I said you were right.” Cory looked back to him. “You make the one inside me happy. I like that feeling. Come with me. Serve me. I’ll make you happy, too.”

“I can’t do that,” Luke said, though it hurt him, physically, to deny Cory.

“Yes, you can. Isn’t giving in one of the easiest thing you can do? Just let me in.”

“The one inside you is dying. I want him back. I need him back.”

“I’m a hundred thousand times more powerful than he is.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It does to the other one,” Cory said, motioning to Lathe in disgust. “He’d grovel at my feet for an ounce of what I’m offering you. Why won’t you take it?”

“You can take that up with him. I just want my Cory back.”

Cory pushed away from the car. “Do you think I couldn’t just take it from you? You said it yourself, revoking your invitation doesn’t work out here, and that’s the only line of defense you have. I can show you parts of yourself you’ve never had access to before. I can make you like a god.”

“Not interested,” Luke said, and Cory just looked at him. Suddenly the cold night air was impossible to breathe, even as a pretense. Words failed him.

“That’s better,” Cory said. Its eyes were no longer Cory’s. They were the same green, but the pupils almost completely swallowed up the iris. “No words, no more useless objections.”

Luke took out the hypo. “And what are you going to do with that?” Cory snarled. “I already told you it would have no effect on me.”

It’s not for you, Luke thought, and Cory’s eyes widened as though he’d spoken aloud. Luke jammed the needle into his own thigh. It worked as well as Lathe said it would. One moment he saw the growing anger across Cory’s face at being denied that which he wanted, the next he was in darkness. He felt his head hitting something, and then he just floated away. He didn’t see Cory, the real Cory, in his hazy dream, but he felt him getting weaker with every moment towards sunrise.

Luke woke up in the basement of the Deane House, mouth dry and his head pounding. He didn’t open his eyes until he could locate Lathe. The dizziness passed for the most part, and he could hear Lathe pacing back and forth in the narrow space.

“You’re awake. I heard you swallow,” Lathe growled.

Luke sat up, touching his forehead. His fingers came away covered in drying blood. “I’m awake,” he agreed.

“How could you fuck that up? Walk up to him, let him suck you off, and stick him. What part of that did you mess up on?”

“He knew the needle was there. He knew you had the chain, and he knew the drug would have no effect on him.” Luke touched his forehead again. He had a lump. It was healing, but he would need to feed before it healed entirely.

“You didn’t know that for sure.”

“I did, actually. I only went along with your stupid plan so that I could talk to him without being taken completely over.”

“And you couldn’t have told me?”

“If I’d fully formed the thought to put it into words, I’m sure he would have been able to read that part as well. However strong you think it is, believe me, Lathe, you’ve underestimated it. It’s even stronger than that.”

“Impossible.”

“The only reason why you’re not groveling on your knees right now is because he doesn’t particularly want you there. If you think you can contain this thing, you’re fooling yourself.”

“You’re just saying that because you want all that power to yourself.”

“What?” Luke demanded. “Are you hearing me, or am I just wasting my breath, such as it is? He will destroy anything in his way, and he’s already calling more vampires to serve him.”

“And what do you suggest we do otherwise?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just stating the situation.”

“And what are you, personally, going to do about it?”

Luke exhaled and touched the lump again. “I’m going to get Cory back.”

“And failing that?” Lathe asked.

“I don’t know,” Luke said. But he did know. It would only sting to bow down once.

*

It was dark out. Luke went upstairs to the second floor. He wasn’t alone here. The woman had stopped crying, but she was still there. The man in the attic, the murderer, the patient on the stair — and there were more people in the house. He saw indigents, not only the man Lathe had killed in the basement but dozens more from the winding paths. 

One of the dead wore a Second World War uniform. Several were dripping wet, filling the room with the smell of river water and decayed leaves. Women, children, some so old and so faint they wore buckskins. The room wasn’t quite twenty feet by thirty, but the dead were layered. They all needed the vortex back.

“I’m sorry,” he told them. He went outside, under the cold stars. There were more dead under the ground. The vortex had chosen this land centuries and centuries ago, and it had cost dozens and dozens of lives. Human lives, which were frail enough to begin with. And now that thing was in Cory, and if Cory remembered any bit of it…

Luke pressed his hands against his face. 

*

The first vampire walked down the old bridge in the middle of the road. The road was cold, coated with the ice fog that had crept up from the river, and the reflection turned green, yellow, red, and then green again. The vampire walked right past Luke and knelt down in the grass in front of the house. He was older than Luke, that much Luke did get from him, but he was empty inside. There was no evidence of ability, nothing like what Luke could do, or what Cory could do. When Luke closed his eyes he felt Cory like a burning torch, and this vampire in front of him was a bare spark. There were others, coming closer, and Luke didn’t know why he didn’t like that at all.

He called up one of his old feeders, Jose, and paid for the cab to wait outside. They didn’t speak. Luke didn’t feel like it, but fresh blood was so much better than any blood pack. When it was over, and Luke wiped up the young man’s semen, he got dressed a bit slower than usual. “You never call anymore. Did you find someone else?”

“I fed from my partner,” Luke said. “He liked hunting.”

“Don’t lose my number again, please. I like you.”

Luke kissed his cheek and gave him money for the fare back. “I won’t. I like you, too.”

Jose closed the door behind him. Luke locked the door behind him and lay down on the couch. He felt the blood work into his system, better than any alcohol, and while he didn’t sleep, he sank down into the gray inside him.

*

The knock on the door was more of a rap, like how a cane would sound against glass. Luke pulled himself up from his sleep, stumbling to the door still half asleep from the sluggish blood in his system, and pulled open the wooden door.

And stopped. The desire to touch his throat — or better yet, to kneel — was instantaneous and all but uncontrollable. His master, Marcus, stood on the porch, the black car behind him gleaming in the moonlight. Marcus was the night. His dark eyes met Luke’s with disdain he was trying hard not to show. He brought the eye of a burning cigarette up to his lips, the horrible smell of smoke curling around his mouth. He wasn’t alone; a young pet stood behind him. It wasn’t the same one Marcus had left him for. This one seemed even greener — and frightened. 

“Master,” Luke said, the word cutting his throat. “What are you—“

“Are you going to invite me in?” Marcus demanded.

No, Luke wanted to say. Bugger off would have worked as well, but he stepped back. “Please,” he said. 

“Please what, Luke? That’s not specific enough.”

Luke closed his eyes. He took a deep breath to tell him to go away, but “Come in,” was all that came to his lips. He remained motionless by the door, unable to speak. 

Marcus stubbed out his cigarette, smile wide on his face. “Luke. I asked you a question.”

“Now isn’t a good time, Master,” he said, finally.

Marcus reacted as though Luke had slapped him. Luke supposed he actually had. “What did you just say?” he demanded.

Luke rubbed his face. He hadn’t touched that part of him that still wanted Marcus’s return in a long time, which was odd for him. The ashes had been cold to the touch, but just being near him made them flare up again. If he hadn’t just been so close to Cory, however, he might have missed the very subtle pull he felt. He cleared his throat. “I suppose you can come in. If you want.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“It’s all I want to, yes,” Luke said. He stepped back and made Marcus open the storm door himself. “What brings you here?” He already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it, regardless.

Marcus stepped into the house, but the pet was brought up short. “The boy, too.”

“The boy can wait outside,” Luke said, and moved to the sitting room. “You won’t be staying long.”

“I agree. This is hardly a suitable abode. What happened to the house I left you?”

“An upswing to downtown property value. I believe it’s a condo now,” Luke said. “You’re not staying here.”

Marcus didn’t appear to hear him. “There is power here, Luke. Enough for all of us. You’ll be coming back to my family. Maybe not as my pet, but I will have need of your services. We must move now. Staking out territory happens quickly.

“I’m not going with you,” Luke said. He stirred the ashes inside himself. Examined them. But there was nothing at all. Marcus’s dark looks would always be classically beautiful, he saw. The eyes could still pierce. His jaw line was still regal. But he was pale in comparison to Cory. “I think I’m really over you.”

“Funny,” Marcus said. “I made you. You belong to me.”

“You set me free,” Luke said. “I felt it when you released me. Did you think I’d stay there, pining for you?” It was ridiculous to hear it, especially since up to — had it only been a week? Less? — a few days ago, it would have been true. “You made your choice. I made mine.”

“Luke—“

Luke held out his hand. “Take your pet and go,” he said. 

Marcus grabbed Luke by the throat, trying to pin him against the wall, but Luke had no problem peeling back Marcus’s hand. Marcus was still strong, Luke felt that in his wrist, it was just…Luke was stronger. Whatever Cory had done to him made him stronger. Marcus’s eyes were wide, but he didn’t protest as Luke showed him to the door. 

Marcus tried grabbing his wrist again. “Best to be with me than against. I would offer you more than other family could possibly.”

Luke shook his head and turned away. “It’s not going to come to that.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Luke saw him reach into his inner pocket of his jacket. He smelled the scent of the black cigarettes and was about to tell him not to light up in his house when he felt the pin prick in his neck. “You’ve always been too trusting.”

“Fuck yourself on a cactus,” Luke managed, and was falling again.

*

Luke woke, wrapped in the chains that Lathe had made, on the floor in the backseat of Marcus’s black car. They didn’t touch his bare skin, but he still felt the burning sensation. It wasn’t enough to make him black out again, but if he’d been thrust into a bathtub full of razor blades he would have been in less pain. The pet in the passenger seat smelled more of Lathe than Marcus did, but only because the smell of tobacco had covered the original scent up. It had been a setup from the very start.

“The vortex isn’t looking for partners,” Luke called. “He only wants slaves to serve and feast on.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Marcus said. “It’s fooling itself if it thinks we’re going to allow it to remain free.”

“How are you going to stop it?” Luke demanded. “It’s stronger than you are. It’s stronger than any of us, and it has no weaknesses.”

“It has one,” Marcus said. Luke waited, and then realized Marcus meant him.

Luke closed his eyes and waited.

*

Marcus drove to the Deane House. Of course he would have. Luke knew it would be a waste of breath to argue the point, how summoning the vortex and trapping it were two different things. They chained him out on the floor of the second story room, right in front of a window, and the dead were so thick around him that when Luke looked into Lathe’s face he saw a dozen dead men and women first. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

“I don’t think so. If there was one thing I had miscalculated before, it was the bond the two of you actually had.”

“It doesn’t think like that. It doesn’t think at all, hardly. If you think it is somehow magically attuned to me in danger—”

“You would be absolutely correct,” Cory said from behind Lathe. He’d changed. There was so very little of Cory left Luke knew that by sunrise there would be nothing of him at all. Luke shook his head, wanting to warn Cory off, but by then he’d already had Lathe up by his throat and dangling several feet off the floor. Marcus appeared frozen, and his pet was motionless beside him.

“Take those chains off him,” Cory said.

The pet was the only one able to comply. Luke stared at him, feeling Marcus through him entirely, and he wondered if he’d been that pathetic when they were together. The hold had seemed absolute, and when Marcus had freed him, he hadn’t taken all his chains off. With Cory in the room, Luke felt that he had been kept in that state of complete need for decades, and Marcus had enjoyed it. 

The chains fell free, and Luke jumped to his feet. In any other situation he would have taken off all his clothes to completely shed the burning, but he didn’t consider it to be very wise. 

Cory shook Lathe, and he jerked in the air like a rag doll. “You’ve been a constant source of annoyance,” Cory said, face completely blank. “Did you think I would let you harm him?”

“Cory—” Luke began, but it was too late. Blue flames, as cold as ice, ran up Cory’s arm, and while they should have burned him, they didn’t. Cory wasn’t completely a vampire any more, Luke supposed. Lathe, unfortunately, still was, and when the flames touched his face, curling around his ears and throughout his hair, he began to melt. 

Vampires are hard to kill, but not impossible. Luke jerked back, his revulsion instinctive at watching Lathe come apart. Cory continued to hold him, even as the fingers of flame slid up inside Lathe’s nostrils, into his ears and down his throat when he opened his mouth to scream, and once the flames spread into him, Lathe burned away from the inside. Eventually Cory opened his hand, and that which remained of Lathe, the waxy remnants that turned to dust the moment they hit the floor, left a sooty black stain where they fell. Cory wiped his hand off on his shirt in disgust. 

“You have no part in this. You may go,” Cory told Marcus’s pet. The pet’s eyes showed white all around, like a frightened horse, and Luke felt Cory casually break the lines that held him to Marcus. And with their breaking, the pet bolted. Luke hesitated, watching Cory watch him go, and there was compassion in Cory’s face. Maybe there was more of Cory remaining than he thought.

“That was my property,” Marcus snarled. His fangs were out. A whole lot of good that would do him, but he stood ready to fight as though Cory were just another vampire. Cory turned to him once the outside door had slammed shut, and he snapped his fingers. Another cold flame appeared just over his fingers, and he pointed casually at Marcus’s feet. 

The flame leapt across the distance, making Marcus jump back, and Cory smiled, obviously enjoying this new game. He snapped his fingers again, but this time Luke stood between him and Marcus. 

“Stop it,” he said. 

“Stop what?” Cory asked. The dead in the room leaned toward Cory like a starving man to a piece of roasted meat. The thing inside Cory had grown fat and powerful off their spirits, if that was the right word for it, and the vortex itself had trapped them to this location. The closer the dead were to him, the firmer they looked, and they reached out to grab him with hands that shook.

“Give me back Cory, and I’ll let you live,” Luke said.

Cory laughed. “How about I keep Cory and I’ll let you serve me,” he said. “If this is a negotiation, you have to understand what your bargaining position is.”

The dead around Cory looked at Luke, begging in their silent fashion to be allowed to take back what had been stolen from them. “It’s not me you have to bargain with,” Luke said. 

“Luke, do not challenge me,” Cory said, his voice flat. Luke took a step closer, so that they were chest to chest, and kissed him first on the lips, then on the cheek, then on the forehead. 

“I’m sorry if this hurts,” Luke said.

“What are you doing?” Cory demanded. “Stop this nonsense, right this instant.”

“Okay,” Luke said. He looked away. It was the dead man wearing the World War Two uniform he saw first. “Take him,” he said.

The soldier nodded. He was the first one to reach inside Cory and pull out something blue and purple. He held it in his fist, going solid for just a second, and then vanished with a flash of light.

Cory reeled back, but Luke held him. The native man was next, taking a larger piece, then the homeless man Lathe had fed on. One by one, the dead took back something that was taken from them, and if Cory could have pushed him aside before, he had lost the ability. He clung to Luke now and Luke supported them both. Luke became afraid that there would be too much taken, that they would start taking pieces of the real Cory with them, but when the last of the dead left them, the vortex was still inside Cory.

But it was weakened. Cory blinked, and then grabbed Luke by the shoulders. For a moment they both stood there. When Luke looked into Cory’s eyes, he saw only Cory. They kissed, lips soft. Luke held still for just a second, questioning more than anything, but it was Cory. It smelled like him, tasted like him, even felt like him. It was Cory. It was all Luke could do to stop himself from pushing Cory down.

“It’s still in him,” Marcus snarled. From his cane he pulled a blade. 

Cory wasn’t facing him, and Luke couldn’t stop him in time. He tried to push Cory to the side, at least get him out the way, but he knew even as he started to push that it wouldn’t be fast enough. The blade was coming down, and it would have separated Cory’s head from his body faster than slicing through a piece of paper.

Cory stopped, his back went rigid. He turned, even with the blade still slicing, and even though it should have been faster than Luke’s eye could follow, Cory still raised his hand and froze Marcus.

He cocked his head, something Luke had seen the vortex do, and it chilled him. “This one belongs to you,” he said, and it wasn’t Cory’s voice, not entirely. But when he looked at Luke, his eyes were the same green Luke had always known. “Should I spare him?”

Marcus’s eyes widened. It was the only part of his body that could move. He was trying to shake his head. Luke put his hand on Cory’s arm. “Let him go,” he said.

Cory snapped his head and Marcus dropped to his knees. He stepped back and nodded. “You’re lucky,” he said, softly, and turned to go. 

Luke followed him out. Three vampires had gathered just on the outside of the yard; they stood like deer in headlights. Luke stopped, though, just on the porch, and shrugged off his jacket. Cory turned to look at him.

“You’re naked,” Luke said.

Cory looked down. “Oh.”

Luke gave his jacket over, and Cory shivered as though he’d just become aware of the chill in the air. “You’re not entirely yourself.”

Cory hesitated, jacket half on, and for a second he looked silly. He looked to where Luke was standing. “What?”

“You’re not entirely yourself,” Luke repeated. “Are you?”

Cory shrugged the jacket all the way on and snapped his fingers. The blue flame was back, hovering just over his fingers. “No,” he said. “But I think I’m mostly me. I mean, I am me, but not like before.”

“But the vortex is still inside.”

“It is,” Cory crossed his arms. “And I feel the power from it.”

Luke stepped off the porch. “And you’re still…you still love me.”

“I saw you,” Cory said. “When it was in control. Luke, I know how you feel. I felt you, too. You did everything to save me. I felt that inside you. All you can do is believe me when I say I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry that you’ll never know as concretely as I do how I feel about you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Cory demanded. “That’s all you have to say?”

Luke smiled, for the first time since all of this had happened. “I thought I didn’t have to say much more than that.”

Cory relaxed. “I suppose you don’t.” He motioned to the vampires. “Things are changing here, Luke. The lines are open. It’s going to attract more and more vampires to it, and you’ll have to build your own family.”

“You’re the one who has all the power,” Luke said.

Cory touched his throat. “But I belong to you, so it’s entirely your power. You have to believe that, too.”

“You’re asking me to take a lot on faith.”

Cory kissed him. His chilly skin took Luke’s warmth, and Luke led him the way to Marcus’s car. He took the keys from Marcus’ pet and told him to go find his master inside. The pet scurried off, and Luke put Cory into the front seat before someone in one of the occasional passing cars called the cops about the naked man standing on the lawn in front of a historic restaurant.

Cory cranked up the heat and closed his eyes for the entire drive back. He put his head on Luke’s shoulder, and Luke stroked his cheek. Once they were home he turned off the engine, closed the door behind him, and came around the car before helping Cory out. “We’re home,” Luke said.

Luke tried to step in, but was brought up short with Cory’s arm over his shoulder. He’d forgotten that he’d revoked the invitation. Cory looked at him, pain on his face obvious, but only for a second. “You’ll be welcome here for as long as you choose to stay.”

“That sounds irrevocable,” Cory said, softly.

“I intended it to be.”

Cory swallowed. “You don’t really intend to stay in the suburbs with all that’s happening, do you?”

“It’s a great house, Cory.” The argument was old and as comfortable as a good pair of boots. “And I need my fish pond.”

Cory stepped inside. Luke peeled his jacket from Cory’s shoulders and went into the sitting room. The fire was gas, something he’d always meant to change. It was worth is, though, at that moment to be able to turn it all the way on. Cory had disappeared, but only to go downstairs and bring up Luke’s down comforter. He spread it out on the hardwood, and then sprawled naked beside it. He let his legs fall open, and put his hands out on his thighs. 

Luke stripped off his clothes. Cory sat up on his elbows. He was so warm, but the blood was sluggish in his system. “I’m hungry. Luke, will you let me drink?”

“Of course,” Luke said. He began to kneel, but Cory stopped him with his hand. 

“Let me,” Cory whispered. 

Luke nodded, awkward on his feet in front of Cory, but Cory drew himself up on his knees. He put the palm of his hand on Luke’s upper thigh. Luke felt the rush of blood, and it left him dizzy. “Would you like me to bite you here?” Cory asked.

Luke nodded. Cory sat up, bringing his lips up to the spot where the femoral artery was closest to the skin. His cock woke up, and so close to Cory’s ear that Luke could feel the slight warmth Cory still had. Cory was completely ignoring it. “Cory, please.”

Cory’s lips were full, and they pulled back into a smile. He curled his tongue around his fang. “You don’t want me to suck you off right now.”

“I assure you, I do,” Luke said, and even tried to take Cory’s head. But, he darted away, sitting back on his heels.

Cory sucked on his fingers. He nudged Luke’s legs further apart, and ran his wet fingers up behind his testicles. Luke threw his head back, riding out the whole body tremble. “Can you feel it?” Cory asked.

“Oh, I feel it,” Luke managed.

Cory bit him, sharply, but pinched the skin rather than drawing blood. “That’s not what I meant.” He sat up, off his heels, and took Luke’s hands. He put them on his shoulders. “Feel.”

For a moment, Luke couldn’t move his concentration from how desperate his cock was. But Cory kept holding him, letting him relax. He didn’t have to breathe, but he found himself inhaling. With every breath, he felt the power emerging from the ground. It crept up the ground water, through the hard clay, to the soil. The asphalt numbed it and the concrete of all of the basements and sidewalks blocked the energy for now, but he still felt it slowly permeate through. It would be stronger tomorrow, stronger the next week, stronger yet after a year. 

“It’s growing,” Luke said.

“Yes,” Cory said. “But it’s yours now.”

“Only because you’re giving it to me,” Luke said.

“You don’t need the reason why,” Cory said, and kissed his inner thigh again. This time his teeth did push into Luke’s thigh, slowly letting the pain compound and build. Luke hissed, equally slowly. He felt his blood well up, felt Cory’s tongue lapping up the drop, and felt Cory go back and tear the wound open.

He bled freely. Cory was there, drinking up what spilled. It pulled him closer to the energy, closer to Cory, and what was inside of Cory. But as he was close enough to see that Cory was completely in control. 

“Cory, please,” Luke said.

Cory bit higher. A sting followed by release. The heat off Cory’s cheek was now from Luke’s own body. “I want you to wait for it,” Cory whispered.

“Compromise here with me, will you?” Luke asked, voice strained.

Cory laughed, softly, and ran his cheek along Luke’s cock. “I’ll fuck you,” Cory said, his eyes bright. “Would you like that?”

Luke could only nod. The room was hot, now, hotter than should ever have been comfortable, even for them, but the heat to Cory’s body still felt warmer than the air. He moved to the couch, because that was where Cory guided him, and it was the most natural thing in the world to let his legs fall open. Lube materialized from under the couch; Luke had forgotten that that’s where Cory stashed it after one too many fumbling episodes. Cory slipped one finger inside Luke, then two, and fucked him with just the two fingers for so long Luke thought he was going to die right there and never come again.

“Tell me you’re ready,” Cory said.

“Fuck, am I ready,” Luke managed.

“And that you want this.”

“Are you insane? Why wouldn’t I want this?”

Cory looked at him, lifting an eyebrow to do so, and Luke put his head down. “I want this,” he said.

“Good,” Cory said, and sat up again. The couch was at a perfect angle. Cory pulled Luke half off the seat and up onto his shoulders. It restricted the blood flow to Luke’s head, but at that particular moment Luke didn’t feel the need to think. 

Cory slid inside him. The pain burned, but tuned him into the ebb of the earth as well. Just before dawn, as it was, the power of the lines feeding the earth were at their strongest, and if Luke opened himself up for more than just Cory’s cock, he could feel everything, from the beating wings of some nocturnal bird to the slumbering roots of the trees out back, already waiting for spring. It had never been like this. There had never been more. And now that the world was opened to him, he couldn’t imagine not having Cory there. “Fuck me,” he whispered.

“If you insist,” Cory said. 

Cory fucked him hard, all but pulling his body up to meet his thrusts, and when that wasn’t enough he manhandled Luke’s body down to the comforter. On his hands and knees, digging his fingers into the blanket was better, and Luke put his head down to the floor, letting Cory’s thrusts work him. When his fingernails weren’t digging into Luke’s hips, giving him a kiss of pain to remind him what they were celebrating, he dragged them down, over Luke’s back. A slap on his ass, a kiss that drew blood on his shoulder, and the perfect stroke catching his prostate was the last bit of stimulation Luke needed. He squeezed his eyes shut and let his body ride the orgasm until he was empty inside.

He didn’t lock down the house during the day, something he’d never done before. Cory had fallen asleep along with him, and when he woke with the sun already heavy in the western sky, Luke just rolled over and dragged a bit more of the comforter over them both rather than getting up to lock all the doors.

“Safe neighborhoods make for safe homes,” he told Cory.

Cory didn’t wake, but pushed his fingers into Luke’s mouth instead. He couldn’t have said, “I love you, now shut up” more clearly if he tried.


End file.
